Word of the Day

My new vocabulary phrase of the day is ‘Google bombing’ and the word for the day is spamdexing.

I was poking around some random blogs and saw a post about doing a Google search for ‘failure’ or ‘miserable failure’. They had a screen shot of the results. Although I understood the top hit shown on the search results, I was nevertheless surprised. Given my skeptical nature, I didn’t believe it so I went to Google to try it for myself. Try it at Google or click here to see the results. Pretty hilarious and it makes perfect sense given his approval ratings over the last few months.

Google has now added an explanation up front that led me to the Wikipedia entry for Google bombing. In short, it’s a way to raise the ranking of a search result as a joke or for “political intentions.” In real life or in cyberspace, someone is always looking at ways to exploit a system.

How Medicines Work

I never was big on biology. It's interesting, but the physical sciences seemed to make more sense to me. Because I hadn't studied a lot of biology, I wasn't aware of how little we understand about how our body works. So when I started working at a pharmaceutical company over 17 years ago, I was very surprised at how little folks knew about how drugs actually worked on the body. A company puts together a package to show a drug is safe (the do no harm part of the Hippocratic oath ) and efficacious to satisfy regulatory agencies. But knowing a drug is safe and effective doesn't mean you understand the mechanism of action. OK, I'm naive...but I was just astounded.

I was reminded of this again today when I read this article. Think of the hundreds of years it took to figure out menthol provides some sort of pain relief through a 'cooling' effect. I wonder how many people died because they applied something poisonous for pain relief before stumbling on menthol. Think of the millions of people that have used menthol preparations over the years for symptomatic pain relief. Many OTC analgesics today (like Bengay and Icy Hot for example) have menthol as one of their medicinal ingredients. However, only recently has the receptor that responds to menthol to produce an analgesic effect been identified! Hopefully that understanding will give some insights that will help folks come up with improved therapies for pain relief.

I'm still astounded how little we understand about medicines!

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."
-- Albert Einstein

Google, Ask, and Blogger Search Results

Dianne had a nice post about blog tracking and the use of MyBlogLog. I get less traffic than she does, but it's still interesting to see where people are coming from. A couple reminded me of posts made long ago that brought back some memories. I was actually surprised to see that people doing a search would actually click on a search result that takes them here. Obviously not very discriminating with their searching. Here are recent searches (Google, Ask, and Blogger) that led people here.

• hogey carmichael biography who was

Took them here. Probably didn't stay long with my Hogey comments. I did see Lauren Bacall on the Oscars and she looked really good.

• cincinnati rollergirls
• blu bayou cincinnati and "blu bayou" cincinnati
• blu bayou roller derby
• sadistic sadie
• 739.27 t213e

A lot of traffic associated with the Rollergirls. The last one took them here. I wonder if they were looking for The Librarian or actually looking for the book.

• tracking blog traffic

• creative cubicles

Took them here.

• clocks that display time floating in air

Took them here.

• wrist fracture physical therapy

Took them here or maybe here. They probably would have found Dianne's post funny. By the way, my shoulder continues to improve and my range of motion, although not the same as the right side, is fairly close. I feel for anyone dealing with a frozen shoulder.

• wedding lion dance august 20, 2006

Took them here.

• earl world

Someone was actually searching for this blog?

And just today I had a hit on this search:

• where in Hawaii can you find a fountain pen by earl?
  

It took them here because of this post that has the phrase "...see if you can find us..." and this post that mentions "...a fountain of feet...". They must have thought Google failed them on that search.

Flickr Badge

I stumbled across The Foo Logs today while poking around at MyBlogLog. The Foo Logs blog has a nice mix of entries on technology, the Internet, news, etc. While scrolling down the blog, I noticed a neat Flickr pane in the sidebar that shows his recent photos. The Foo was kind enough to respond to a message I sent asking how he set it up. As a result, I've added a Flickr badge to my sidebar -- you have to scroll down a bit to see it. It's a Flash piece that shows random photos from my Flickr pool. You can click on any photo in the sidebar to see a larger version. Pretty neat. Thanks to The Foo!

Murals With a 3D Appearance

There has been a lot of buzz about this mural on a building in Columbus, OH. Although it's a flat wall, the 3D effect of depth incorporated into the mural is done so well that it made me wonder if it was real or if it was done using Photoshop. (I guess that skeptical nature is part of the low trust block in my personal DNA.)

Thanks to Carla for sharing a co-worker's email, I found out the artist who made the mural is Eric Grohe. He has a very nice website that has a gallery of his work. There is a nice before and after comparison of the building shown at the left. Personally, I like the murals that he did for the Miller Brewing Company that you can see here. This mural is my favorite. I wonder how many people have walked into the wall thinking they were going down a hallway.

Sunday Afternoon ... Somewhere

I stumbled across this photo on Flickr. It was setup by some folks in Beloit, WI. This must have taken quite a bit of planning and work. Here is a newspaper article describing the effort.



Here is a picture of the Seurat painting.

Just Sit Right Back and You'll Hear a Tale...

Here's your chance to be like Alan Hale and become the Skipper of the Minnow. Check out the for sale ad that claims this is the boat used in the making of Gilligan's Island. You can find some additional Gilligan's Island info here. Thanks to Boing Boing for calling this to our attention.

Borgman Blog

I like Jim Borgman's editorial cartoons. Even though we don't subscribe to a local paper, I'd occasionally look at his creations. Today I stumbled across Jim Borgman's blog. I found it pretty interesting. Besides showing the cartoons, he will sometimes show sketches that led to the final cartoon and give some background. I thought this cartoon about the TSA's recent antics was pretty funny.

TSA....vigilant, effective, efficient. Yeah, right! I guess that's why a utility knife was found on the seat of a plane going from Philadelphia to Connecticut.

P.S. -- This is my 200th post to the blog!

Our Commander in Chief

This has been all over the Internets

Personal DNA

I went to the PersonalDNA site and took their personality test. It's a little on the long side. I'm a 'Concerned Analyst'. Here are my results in a color map -- hover over the blocks to see the traits associated with each color.

Concerned Analyst

Benefits of Blog Tracking

I don't get much traffic here...not many folks reading my musings. Nevertheless, when I was visiting Patrick Mayfield's blog and reading one of his posts about tracking blog traffic, I was intrigued at what was available. I signed up for Technorati and also MyBlogLog just for smiles. As expected, I'm not getting a lot of traffic.

What is interesting is that MyBlogLog gives you a pro account for 3 days that reverts to a free account later. The pro account gives instant updates on where people come from when going into your site and what they click on while there. When I looked at my stats this evening, I noticed I had someone coming to my blog from Sk8Crime's blog (one of the Rollergirls I mentioned in an earlier post). I thought that was strange until I went to her blog this evening and saw this post that links to my site. It's a good post--pretty clever choice of music! She has a good livejournal site.

We already bought our tickets for SRS II, so I guess I'll have to go incognito. My name is Earl.

SRS II Coming Up

Tickets are on sale now for Super Roll Sunday II. Check out the Cincinnati Rollergirls website for information.

Jason Bechtel, the official photographer for the Rollergirls, has some great pictures of the debut match posted on Flickr. He has a good eye and, given the relatively poor lighting in the rink, very good equipment and technique. Clearly a professional. He has two groups -- the first match here and the second match here. It was Blu Bayou's birthday that day, and we actually show up in the photo Jason took when they brought her out to mention her birthday. Do the 'Where's Waldo' thing and see if you can find us in the crowd.

P.S. You can find out where Waldo is by looking at Dianne's post.

Subway Maps

Subway maps aren't a big need in Cincinnati. There isn't a lot of activity in the Cincinnati subway. When Dianne and I were in Washington recently, we used their subway a lot. I was forever having to look at the subway map to remember which direction we needed to go. I ran across this site that has subway maps for iPods. That would have been handy. Neat idea.

Also along the subway theme is this site that show the London subway map with anagrams for each station. Put the cursor over the anagram and the real name shows up. Kind of cute. Not sure how long it will be there though as the last time it was posted, the British authorities made him take it down.

Good News for Actonel

Good news for P&G/s-a this week with the approval of Actonel for male osteoporosis. This is one of the last clinical studies I worked on before transferring to my new position just over two years ago. It's good to see the work finally paying off.

Viral Videos

I ran across this viral video site, WorldTV, the other day. Each week they chart the top video from the four leading internet video sites. Some of these are really funny. If you want to be a lemming, check it out if you have a couple minutes to waste.

Super Roll Sunday - 1

It was Super Roll Sunday today – the first match for the Cincinnati Rollergirls. I’m sure you’ll be able to find out more on their website soon and see some better photos of the action there. Going in, I was pulling for The Riots (because of Lauren’s Roller Derby Diva blog and the Ithaca connection) and the Full Metal Corsets (just because I liked the team name and some of the member names). But alas, both of my teams lost by huge margins. Now that I've got a first look at some of the characters, I might have to rethink my favorites.

The first match was between the Bloody Sundays and The Riots. This was a blowout with the Sundays winning easily. The Sundays were good, but it seemed like the Riots beat themselves by running into each other and having their jammers lose momentum. My take was that Gummilove was their strongest jammer and Bola del Fuego seemed to do well. Miss Print had one good jam but also another where she got held up in the pack and didn’t score. Dianne commented that there wasn’t enough whipping or helping along of the jammers. It was hard to get a good picture, but here is an artistic view of one of the Sundays/Riots jams.

Watching the warm-ups, especially for the second match between the Full Metal Corsets and the Dames of Destruction, it was readily apparent which team had the best skaters. In that match, Sadistic Sadie of the Dames was far and away the best jammer. She really maneuvered through the pack well and she used her teammates to help her advance and score (sometimes by pushing them to the ground in order to stay in bounds and keep moving ahead). The Corsets took a beating with three players going down hard on separate occasions that stopped the match. That was no fun to see. Two of the girls (The Librarian and I believe Collier Mamma) seemed to be hurt bad and they sat out the rest of the match. The Corsets had some tough cookies on the team that were fitting into the bad girl mold, but not the best skaters. Among the bad girls was Sk8 Crime whose attitude or persona I didn’t care for. After some tough jostling with Sadie in the next to last jam, I was happy to see Sadie pull Sk8 Crime down from behind using her belt and then go at it. It was worth the penalty to put Sk8 Crime in her place.

All in all, I thought it was a good event. It seemed like the Rollergirls were having fun and many were playing to the crowd. The flat track style is different and takes more planning to work through the pack and stay in bounds. Most everyone was giving it their all and the blocking was tough. It also takes a lot of work from a lot of volunteers to put on something like this. I hope they can make a go of it! However, you could tell the league is young and they need to work out some kinks like scoring (having team names rather than home/visitors), timekeeping, concessions to handle the crowd, announcing, etc. Nevertheless, I’d go again and encourage anyone with a roller derby interest to check it out. Who knows, maybe I can talk Dianne into SRS II coming up in a few weeks.

Dr. Z.

OK….I’ll admit it. I don’t get the whole Dr. Z ad campaign. I find the commercials get old very fast and the likeness of Dr. Z on the AskDrZ website is creepy. The blinking eyes and the wiggle of the mustache is worse than the annoying Paper Clip or Einstein characters of the Microsoft Office Assistants.

The only thing I want to ask Dr. Z is was this the best ad campaign your agency could come up with? Wow!

Super Roll Sunday

It's coming up fast...Super Roll Sunday...the premier bout of the Cincinnati Roller Girls. You can get tickets now online or at a few locations around town. Dianne and I will see you there this weekend. You can read more about the group at the Roller Girls website or get one insider's view on the Roller Derby Diva's blog on the Cincinnati.com site.

I don't know anything about the people involved, but I have to say I thought the player number for "The Librarian" on the team "The Full Metal Corsets" was kind of funny. Her number is 739.27 T213E which is the call number for a book written by Elizabeth Taylor called Elizabeth Taylor: my love affair with jewelry. I guess The Librarian is a Liz Taylor fan. I wonder if she has a magical horse with wings that will help her move through the pack as a jammer. We'll see on Sunday.

Looking Ahead to Reno

Only 36 days until the start of the National Championship Air Races and Air Show at Reno. My favorite group of racers is the unlimited class. There are 32 entries registered in the unlimited class this year. That’s a good sized field. More important are the planes that are registered. Rare Bear, an F8F Bearcat, will be back to try for a third straight win. However, unlike last year when Rare Bear’s primary competitor was absent due to financial constraints, Dago Red will be back. Dago Red, a P-51 Mustang, won several years in a row prior to Rare Bear’s current streak. Finally, I’m happy that my favorite team will be there. Voodoo, race number 5, is also a P-51 Mustang. You can just barely see the nose of Voodoo behind me in my profile picture. Always in the hunt, Voodoo had engine problems last year that caused the team to drop out. They are now testing a new engine that hopefully will help them move up the ranks in the gold, or top, tier of the unlimited racers. The Voodoo website also mentioned they stripped the wings and smoothed out imperfections in the airfoil that might help their speed a bit.

The highlight of the air show portion of the event this year is the Air Force Thunderbirds.

If you haven’t been to Reno for an air race, you’ll have the chance next year in Hollywood style. Next year is the scheduled debut for the movie “Thunder Over Reno”. There is a nice website for the film. Looking at the cast, I doubt it will be an Academy award winner. Nevertheless, it might be a good film to see on the big screen.

Fly low, go fast, and turn left.

Polo Grill

On our way back from the Jeffersonville outlet mall, Dianne and I stopped at the Polo Grill for dinner. We had a gift card from Raymond Walters College for the restaurant. I had a cup of tomato bisque that had a garlic crustini with goat cheese and salsa. It was a nice dinner, but it was freezing in the restaurant. Fortunately Dianne had brought along a long-sleeved shirt.

This is a test of a picture blog entry from the phone. Thanks to Dianne for teaching me about the mobile blogging capability. It's practical now that we have a qwerty keyboard on our phones.

Hello world....from my phone.

Hello world....from my phone.

Sunday in D.C.

This morning we got up and had breakfast at the M Street Bar & Grill. It’s located just across the street from the CBS building. While eating, Dianne noticed several camera crews setting up at the CBS building entrance. We didn’t recognize the gentleman who came out the door, but he stopped and answered questions for the reporters. I checked the Face the Nation web site and found out the guy was Daniel Ayalon, Israel’s ambassador to the United States. That’s our brush with greatness during the trip.

We started out the day at the National Archives. Unlike the movie ‘National Treasure’ where Nicholas Cage just waltzes into the rotunda area to see the Declaration of Independence, we had to go through a rigorous screening where all gum was purged. It was crowded in the document area and dimly lit to protect the documents. Although you could take pictures without a flash, the Constitution and the Declaration were so faded they were difficult to read in person. I could barely see John Hancock’s signature on the Declaration. All in all, I wasn’t too wowed by the experience. The principles the founding fathers put in the documents seem way more important than the faded documents themselves. Interestingly, just outside the rotunda there was one of the four copies of the Magna Carta that was approximately 700 years old and yet was much easier to read. Here is a shot of the National Archives building from across the street in the sculpture garden. Note the person in the red hat.

After visiting the Archives we went to the National Gallery of Art. It is a large museum and there is a lot to see. I enjoyed the Impressionist art (or the lumpy stuff as Dianne likes to say) and the Netherland/German realism art. These schools represent two extremes of realistic, almost photographic representations of still lifes or people and a blurry, overall impression of a subject conveyed as much through color and lighting as in shape. Dianne enjoyed the more contemporary American paintings (Sargent, Homer, etc.) as well as paintings by the Masters like Rembrandt and Durer. Dianne also wanted to check out the special exhibit on Venetian drawings, but they were more watercolor and gouache type media than strictly pen and ink or pencil drawings.

After seeing the indoor art, we went across the street to the sculpture garden. There were a lot of nice flowers and landscaping, a few large sculptures, and a large pond & fountain. People were sitting on the edge of the pond with their feet dangling in the water to cool off. Dianne called it the fountain of feet (see the picture above). One of my favorite sculptures in the garden was that of a large typewriter eraser. Another, which really didn’t photograph well in two dimensions, was a representation of a house which from a long way off followed perfect lines of perspective. However, up close, you noticed the different walls of the house and the roof tilted opposite of the way they would meet at the actual corner of the house. It was like they were inverted from their normal perspective – almost like the house was turned inside out. I thought it was a very clever play on perspective. I also got a picture of Dianne near a sculpture made from concrete cubes showing her counting the blocks like one of the exercises in the Big Brain Academy game. Some of the sculptures were strange – or I guess I wasn’t able to appreciate them. For example, this sculpture was just a metal plate with rounded corners. Go figure!

You can see a collection of photos from the National Gallery and the Sculpture Garden by clicking here for the Flickr group.

After the sculpture garden, we walked to the International Spy Museum. There isn’t any photography allowed in the museum. It covered the basics of becoming a spy and the techniques and gadgets they use as well as many blurbs about spies throughout history. Personally, I liked the gadgets like .22 caliber cigarettes, spy cameras, bugs, etc. It’s a nice museum, but a lot of reading so I’m not sure how well it would be received by kids.

Dianne’s feeling a bit better, but still not eating too much. Surprisingly, she actually asked me to slow down while walking and she didn’t wander away much today.

Saturday in DC

Got up this morning and had breakfast with Dianne – well, I had breakfast while she picked at some fruit. We went back to the room and she fell asleep almost instantly. After an hour or so, she said she still wasn’t feeling well and suggested I should go to the National Air and Space museum on my own. It’s sad she wasn’t feeling well, but I don’t think she was thrilled about going there anyway. I grabbed the Metro just south of Washington Circle and went through the museum. It was fun to see many historic planes and space vehicles. In the main area there is the Spirit of St. Louis, the X-1 Glamorous Glennis, the X-15, and SpaceShip One that recently won the X-prize. Across from these planes on the second floor were other notable planes like the Lockheed Vega (the B model that was similar to the Winnie Mae flown by Wiley Post) used by Amelia Erhardt to fly solo across the Atlantic (~5 years after Lindbergh) and the Lockheed Sirius floatplane used by Charles and Anne Lindbergh to chart great circle routes from the West coast of the US to the far East. Some of the early planes like the Wright Flyer and the Vin Fiz (made the first transcontinental flight) were interesting. Pictures of the Vin Fiz are here and here. I wonder what Vin Fiz tasted like? The story of Cal Rogers and his journey across the US in that plane to win the prize put up by William Randolph Hearst is pretty interesting. I can’t imagine seeing the US that way. The Ole Miss was perched high above the viewing floor. Imagine riding in a plane continuously for about a month! They even had a platform built just behind the radial engine so they could work on it while in flight! It’s amazing what folks did to promote aviation. In that same era were air racing items like the Hughes Racer that set speed records and the Bendix Trophy.

One thing nice about the NASM is not only can you walk around the planes at their level, but you can also view the planes from raised platforms that go around the periphery of many of the rooms. That gives you an interesting view that you don’t get at other museums like the US Air Force Museum in Dayton. An example is this picture of an ME-109 – a German WWII era fighter. You can see other pictures from my visit to the NASM by clicking here for the Flickr group.

It was very hot in DC today (upper 80’s) and very humid. I walked over to the reflecting pool in front of Capitol Hill and felt like jumping in the water to cool off. On the way home, I stopped at a 7-11 store to get some liquids and meds for Dianne. She looked pretty pale, complained about being cold, and felt pretty hot. She’s not having a great vacation so far. Hopefully she’ll get back on feet tomorrow. I think I’ll be eating dinner by myself again tonight.

Friday in Washington, DC

We made it to Washington yesterday afternoon. The flight was smooth except for the descent into DC. There was some turbulence going through the cloud layers and the pilots were working to fly the approach the whole way.

After checking into our hotel, we went to the National Natural History museum as they have summer hours that extend later in the day. We spent a good 3+ hours walking around. It is a nice museum with lots of different exhibits including dinosaurs, fossils, skeletons, minerals & gems, etc. A lot of the fossils in the dinosaur area came from Ohio. Some were similar to those you see around the Caeser's Creek park area near Waynesville, OH. I enjoyed looking at the skeletons of creatures both extinct and those around today. It was interesting to see things side-by-side through the ages to get a picture of evolution. One of the best presentations of that we saw was an exhibit comparing horse skulls and forelimbs through the ages. Click here for a picture of Dianne at the exhibit. At the right is a picture of Dianne standing under a set of shark jaws from millions of years ago. If you look at the wall, you'll see a white outline that was projected on the wall to depict the body of the shark around those jaws. It was large! Click here for a close up picture of the jaw. Just above Dianne’s head and a bit behind the large jaws, you’ll see a smaller set of shark jaws from a recent great white shark. Quite a difference in size! We didn't spend a lot of time in the gem and mineral area, but we did see the Hope diamond and I took this picture for Eric. From top to bottom that collection of crystals was at least 4 feet high.

We also walked to the main building of the Smithsonian. Around the south side of the building (away from the Mall) is an extensive rooftop garden. Here is a picture of Dianne sitting in one section of the garden area. While sitting at the garden, Dianne mentioned she was tired and wasn’t feeling the best. I thought it was because we didn’t get much sleep Thursday evening and we hadn’t had anything to eat since having a light brunch. We jumped on the Metro and found our way back to the hotel. She didn’t feel like dinner, so I ate by myself in the hotel. Unfortunately, she is fighting some type of GI bug and isn’t feeling well at all. Check out her blog entry. Finally, all the Friday pics are collected in a group here.

We Cut the Umbilical Cord

We took the plunge a couple weeks ago and got rid of our traditional landline telephone. Our home phone number was transferred to my cell phone, so I’m carrying around the “home” telephone. With the evolution of cellular phone plans that include long distance calling, we weren’t using our home telephone much – except to talk to local telemarketers. The primary use of our landline was high speed internet access. We moved our internet access to our cable television line. With the change in internet access, it didn’t make sense to keep paying for the landline. Nevertheless, it seems odd not having the connection. I grew up with landline telephones that were all corded, so it seems strange not to have one. I still walk in the door every day after work and glance at the answering machine to see if we received any messages. Old habits die hard.

I was lucky growing up – for many reasons. My mother worked for the telephone company so we had quite a few of the latest and greatest phone models. I remember thinking a Trimline phone was so cool in that you didn’t have to stand by the base to dial the phone – when you actually had to move your finger in a circular motion to dial the phone. You could dial in the palm of your hand. Touch tone service was even more amazing. Forget all that dialing and having to start over when your finger slipped. We also had the large, four prong jacks installed all over the house so we could move phones around as needed. And then there was the occasional “conference call”, usually when talking long distance to relatives, made by picking up secondary extensions after the main contact was made. But even with all this ‘fancy’ equipment, I still relied on my brain’s memory to store frequently called numbers. Otherwise I had to pull out a paper book to look up numbers.

How things have changed as the equipment has improved. Speed dialing or voice commands make calling so simple it’s rare to touchtone out a number and it’s sometimes hard to remember numbers I’ve entered in my contact list. Even basic cell phones have a speaker mode to facilitate simple conference calls like we used to do with multiple extensions. We decided on the LG VX9800 for our cell phone. It has a full qwerty keyboard built in that makes text messaging a snap! I can also check the news headlines and watch video clips of news stories.

I wonder how long it will take me to stop looking at our old answering machine when I come home.

Friday Activities

Friday was a busy day for us. We started out looking for Da Kine Bail Bonds. All the fans of Dog the Bounty Hunter will recognize that business. If not a fan, you can read a bit about him here. Dianne snapped a picture of me out front. Unfortunately, no one was in the office. The white board had pictures of two people taped to it and written below them inside a heart was “Leland’s most wanted”. My theory is they were out tracking someone down. The office is much smaller than it appears on TV. Dianne was glad they were closed so I couldn’t get a Dog T-shirt. In case you want to find them, they are close to the state capitol area on Queen Emma street.

After that we had lunch at Grace’s. It’s one of Dean’s favorites, but a familiar spot for Dianne as well.

We drove up through the Nuuanu area and saw several temples. We stopped at one to look around and you can see several pictures here. There were many offerings of cut flowers and plates of apples and oranges. There were several altars where incense was burning. In one of the buildings behind the main temple, there were some folks saying a chant. It was very pretty, but I don’t know anything about the Buddhist temples.

We continued by going up the Pali highway and stopping at the lookout point. It’s near the ridge of the Koolau mountain range at about 3000 feet overlooking the windward side of the island. It’s near the spot where King Kamehameha drove his rivals over the cliffs in his quest to “unite” the islands. The picture here gives a sense for the steep cliff. The set of pictures here shows some of the view. It was a bit cloudy and extremely windy when we were up there. You can read more about the Pali here. Fortunately we were there during the day so we didn’t have to worry about the Night Marchers (or as I like to call them, the Midnight Stalkers).

After going over the mountains, we followed the highway north along the windward side to go to the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC). We stopped and got a couple pictures of a windward beach that you can see here and here. The PCC has areas set up for many different South Pacific islands. In each area, they have historical buildings representative of the island and have programs or craft exhibits conducted by people with a connection to that island. We visited the areas for Hawaii, Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga. It’s one of Oahu’s top tourist destinations, so it wasn’t number 1 on Dianne’s list of places to see. But it is an interesting spot and we hadn’t been there since we were married. I thought it was nice and there are several pictures here. The day at PCC was capped off with a buffet dinner and an evening show highlighting song and dance from each of the islands. Thanks to Milton for arranging tickets for us.

Dinner at KCC

Tonight we went to dinner at the Kapiolani Community College Culinary Institute with Milton, Carol, Michelle, Marc, Taylor, and Grandma Tong. The restaurant is a proving ground for the students in the culinary program. The presentations of all the food were wonderful and everything tasted good -- although in true Top Chef fashion, there was a lot of analysis of the flavors. We had a nice appetizer of brie cheese baked in a phylo dough pastry with a fig and fruit sauce. The house salad was mixed greens stuffed inside a hollowed out tomato with wax beans, green beans, and sliced avocado on the side. I had a grilled pork loin with an onion sauce as my main entre. Dessert was a pear tart with a frangipan glaze and ice cream. It was a very nice dinner. I took a couple camera phone pictures of the main dish (at left) and a spring roll appetizer that you can see here.

Hawaii's North Shore

Dianne, Michelle, and I drove up to the North Shore of Oahu to go to the beach. We found a spot just a little north of Haleiwa town that was very nice. I took a few additional photos that you can see here. I stayed in the shade to avoid looking like a lobster. Dianne and Michelle both fell asleep in the sun.

Afterwards, we went to Kaneohe to do some laundry and relax by the pool. In the evening, we met Milton, Carol, Taylor, Marc, Paige, Jacob, and Madison for dinner at Pah Ke's in Kaneohe. It's a great Chinese place that we've been to several times before. All the dishes were very good -- but the salt/pepper shrimp, the taro duck, and the lettuce wraps were the favorites.

Diamond Head State Monument

On Tuesday, Dianne and I drove to the Diamond Head State Monument. It’s an area inside the Diamond Head Crater where you can park and then hike up a trail to the rim of the crater where an old fire control station (i.e. gunfire from shore batteries – not forest fires) has been turned into a public lookout. The brochure we got mentioned observers here not only controlled fire from artillery batteries at Diamond Head, but also the artillery at Fort DeRussy where we visited the Army Museum (see my earlier post). Because it’s up so high, you have a wonderful view of Waikiki and downtown Honolulu as well as the southeast shore of the island. You can see a few of the photos we took here. It was pretty warm when we were hiking up and there wasn’t much of a breeze inside the crater. Once we got to the rim, the breeze helps cool you off. The view made the hike worth it. It’s worth the hike, but take plenty of water.

Afterwards, we went to the Waiola shave ice store to help cool off. It's the first review when you scroll down that site. It really is the best shaved ice on the planet.

Hawaii Update 2

On Sunday morning, Dianne and I drove to the Sand Island Beach park. You can see a photo of the beach park here. It isn’t the nicest beach for swimming, it’s in an industrial area, and there are several “campsites” that appeared to be groups of homeless people. Nevertheless, it was very pretty and we got to see some tugboats taking in a barge that was full of shipping containers.

In the afternoon we met Carol and Michelle at the Taste of Honolulu. It isn’t as large as the taste of Cincinnati, but there were many bands and a lot of different types of food to try. It was very hot and there wasn’t much of a breeze. Before going inside, we looked around the civic center and got some pictures of Father Damien, me and the Queen, the Iolani palace, King Kamehameha, etc. Take a look at all the pictures in the group here.

On Sunday evening, Milton arranged for us to see the performance of Cirque Hawaii. It’s a smaller scale version of the Cirque du Soleil shows in Las Vegas, but there are some amazing acrobats with great athletic ability! I enjoyed the show. Afterwards the family went to a very nice Chinese restaurant near the theater.

We're on Oahu

It was a long flight, but after about 10 hours we made it to Hawaii on Thursday afternoon. The flight was uneventful.

On Thursday evening, we went with Milton & Carol, Taylor, Marc, Paige, Jacob, and Madison for dinner at Irifune. It’s a good local spot that you can read about here and here.

Friday morning we got up early since we weren’t quite adjusted to the time change. We went to the market near Grandma Tong’s place that has the best manapua spot around. It’s a favorite of mine and since we got up early, they were still warm when we got there. Here is a picture of one of the buns. Manapua is a Chinese barbequed pork (char siu) that is stuffed inside a slightly sweet dough and then either steamed or baked. The pork at this place is minced so it’s very easy to eat. After breakfast, we visited with Grandma Tong. She’s getting a new, bamboo floor put in her living room so much of the furniture was moved in preparation for the work.

After our visit, we walked around the Ala Moana shopping center and then went to the beach park near there.


On Saturday we walked around Waikiki, looking at the various shops and the International Market place. I got a good picture of Dianne near one of the statues. We also saw the statue of queen Lili’uokalani that had several leis placed on it. You can read about her here and here.

After taking a quick peek at the west end of the Waikiki beach, we went to the US Army Museum at Fort DeRussy Park. It’s a small, but nice museum that is inside the Battery Randolph that was used to guard the coast. They had two, 14 inch guns as the main artillery for the battery. They said when those guns were fired, some of the windows in Waikiki cracked and many of the surrounding buildings rattled. You can learn more about the museum here and here. I took a couple pictures of a WWII era US and Japanese tanks outside the museum. The museum has a lot of history about the attack on Pearl Harbor and the 100^th battalion composed of Americans of Japanese Ancestry. There is a lot of info about the battalion on the web including the sites here and here.

Saturday evening we went to Kurt and Tracy’s wedding that was held at the Halekulani hotel. It is a very nice hotel on the west end of Waikiki that has a garden courtyard in between two main towers of rooms. The wedding was held in the courtyard. After the ceremony, a reception was held in the ballroom. The food was wonderful and there was a nice program for the reception. One of the highlights of the reception for me was the Chinese Lion dance. Since both Kurt and Tracy are half Chinese, they included this dance as part of the reception. I was not aware of the tradition and there is a nice explanation here. There were two lions with the traditional drum, gong, and cymbal. It was a nice performance that will assure lots of good luck for them.

Pepsi and Mentos

Pat had an interesting 'fun with science' post that had a link to a website showing what can happen when you mix Pepsi and Mentos (the fresh maker). A couple weeks ago on VH1, I was watching a show called Web Junk 20 that highlights various viral items circulating on the web. One of the items was this video that investigates what happens when a girl tries to reproduce the mentos fountain in her stomach. I thought it was hilarious!

Cincinnati Roller Girls

While growing up, one of the most entertaining sports to watch on TV was professional wrestling. My Dad took me to a professional wrestling match (the AWA) as a kid and I went to a couple during graduate school when the WWF was coming of age and Hulk Hogan was on top. It was fun to see some of the wrestlers live -- Mad Dog Vachan, the Crusher, Andre the Giant, and Hulk Hogan to name a few. I still watch Hogan Knows Best on the VH1 network.

Right behind professional wrestling was Roller Derby. Basically it was like wrestling on roller skates. A lot of posturing, yelling, fighting, and hard hitting action. Unfortunately, the revival of the roller derby teams in the 70s didn’t last long. However, teams are sprouting up again around the country. Last year, the A&E network had a series called Rollergirls that followed teams in the Texas roller derby league. That was an interesting show, although the roller derby matches themselves were slightly different since it was all women. I don’t know if A&E is going to have a second season of the show.

I was pleasantly surprised to see on the Cincinnati Enquirer site that a flat track roller derby team is starting up in Cincinnati! You can read the Roller Derby Diva’s blog about the start up here. They are having there first public scrimmage in July and their first match in August. That has potential for good local entertainment.

Krohn Conservatory & Butterfly Show

I took the day off yesterday since I had a follow-up with the orthopedist for my shoulder and physical therapy later in the day. In between I went to the Krohn Conservatory for the annual butterfly show. I thought a weekday would be a good time to go since kids are in school. With fewer people I hoped to have an easier time getting some photos with the new camera. Boy was that a bad assumption! I got there about a half-hour after opening and there were two school buses parked outside. It didn't occur to me that schools would have field trips to the conservatory this time of year. There were kids running around all over the place! There were also a lot of moms with kids and/or strollers taking in the exhibit. It was pretty crowded, but I got some good shots anyway.

Since it was a cloudy day, they gave passes for a return visit since the butterflies aren't as active when it is cloudy. However, there were many flying around. They also had a couple volunteers brushing some type of nectar on your hands so the butterflies would land on you. A lot of people had butterflies landing on their hands. The kids eyes really light up when they "catch" a butterfly that way. This year they had a lot of butterflies from Australia and some were quite large! I collected the best of my butterfly photos in a Flickr set you can see here.

I also went through the other non-butterfly rooms to get some plant and flower photos. It was cloudy and so the light wasn't the best. Nevertheless, I got some nice shots in the orchid room. Even though the light was flat, I think the flowers look better in the natural light rather than with a flash. The flower and plant photos are in a Flickr pool here.

Spotback

With the blog explosion on the web, it's hard to keep up with all the things posted on even selected blogs. I am a big believer in Bloglines, but I've had trouble with that site in some browsers so I'm not able to keep up on my reading. Also, although many stories propogate through the blogosphere so you'll likely see them on some popular sites, the problem with a site like Bloglines is your focus may limit exposure and you might miss something of interest. Because of these limitations I started looking for alternatives.

I recently signed up for a free account at Spotback (now in Beta). It's a news aggregator of sorts that has more of the feel of a newspaper. Stories are organized in categories like general news, technology, science, sports, etc. As you browse through the headlines and read stories, you can rate the stories. The software uses your ratings to customize which stories appear on your page. So rather than signing up for a particular feed, you're being fed stories in categories that match your interests.

I'm curious if others have tried this site or similar services. I have only started making ratings, but it didn't take long for stories to show up from some familiar sites like BoingBoing, MAKE magazine, and others. Hopefully as the number of ratings increases, the story selection will improve.

Dream Dinners Session

Thanks again to Kyle and Tresha for giving us a sneak preview to Dream Dinners. Dianne had a post about it here. On Friday evening, I had our first true session where I assembled the ingredients for 6 different dinners. It wasn't too bad, although I was on the slow side. I'm rationalizing it because I split 4 of the entrees into two separate portions so we wouldn't be having leftovers for days and days. The most difficult entree was the chicken crepes. That took awhile to make the filling, fill and roll the crepes, and make the sauce for the top. When I was done, I was glad we had picked that item as that is never something I would have tried making at home on my own. It would have been too much work to assemble all the ingredients and make the crepes itself before doing the assembly.

Dianne stopped in to help me load up the car when done. I still can't lift much with my left arm. She got there early so she went to the neighboring GameStop to look around and then she played with her DS in the Dream Dinners waiting area until I was done.

On Saturday, we had the oven baked almond chicken -- scroll down here and you can click on the description. I thought it was really good. I think it'll work out well having some Dream Dinner items on hand.

New 7 Wonders

A Swiss based group called the "New7Wonders Foundation" is sponsoring a global vote to select a new set of 7 wonders of the world. Apparently there was a list of 77 nominees that was narrowed down to 21 candidates at the beginning of this year. You have plenty of time to review the candidates and make your vote. The final selection will be announced on 7/7/07 (I wonder if the announcement will be at 7:07 and 7 seconds on the morning?).

Personally, I don't understand all the nominees. Some are clear: the Great Wall and the pyramids at Giza. Clearly they seem like worthy candidates. I'm curious about the other nominees that didn't make the final set. I can't help but think there are significant structures that should have made the list ahead of some of these (e.g. the Statue of Liberty). But, since I didn't vote for the finalists I guess I should be quiet.

You can become a free member of the N7W foundation and place your 7 votes. You can also buy votes by purchasing a certificate for a site or sites. The proceeds go to funding the voting as well as providing money to restore or preserve historical structures (50% of money earmarked for preservation work). Thanks to Michael at the Neverending Rainbow for pointing out this site.

140 out of 145

After my fall in January, my left shoulder strength and mobility were very poor. At first I could barely raise my arm forward like you’d reach for a doorknob. Initially the orthopedist wanted to wait for the bone to heal before starting physical therapy. Obviously he didn’t want me using the arm for anything due to the risk for an additional fracture. However, he didn’t want to immobilize the arm in a sling or cast as that would increase the likelihood of a “frozen shoulder.” A frozen shoulder refers to limited muscle function caused by muscle adhesions that form during muscle healing. If the arm and shoulder aren’t being used, these adhesions limit the range of motion for the muscle.

Unfortunately due to a delay in PT approval, I was starting to stiffen up when I saw the orthopedist in March. He wanted me to focus on improving my range of motion by working through the pain associated with stretching the muscles. He gave me until the end of April to get my arm straight up above my head using a forward arc style windmill motion (like the first flexion pictures here except while standing). I was also limited in my ability to move my wrist outward while my arm was bent 90 degrees with my elbow staying at my side (like the shoulder external rotation picture here – but with your elbow at your side).

If traditional physical therapy doesn’t work, the alternative to restore motion in a frozen shoulder is manipulation under anesthesia (MUA). In short, they put you out and yank your arm around to break up the adhesions. Needless to say, it’s painful after you wake up. That was my motivation.

Some of the therapy sessions were painful when they were stretching those arm and shoulder muscles. Progress was slow, but I could sense improvement. They’d measure the range and see improvement, but it wasn’t close to expectations. Dianne was watching me stretch one night and I asked if my external rotation was improved. She looked puzzled and asked me to show her with my good arm. I could rotate out about 35 degrees whereas she had an almost 90 degree range! By the way, I now call her Mr. Fantastic when she shows off her shoulder movement. I shared this story with my physical therapist and she measured my “good” side and found I could only rotate my straight arm up forward about 145 degrees whereas 180 is standard. She said typically after injuries, people get within 10% of the range in their good arm. That gave me hope.

Besides intense stretching during physical therapy, my therapist also added exercises to start building strength. They were mild so as not to cause further fracture, but I think that helped stabilize the joint and aid the range of motion. Last Wednesday the therapist made measurements again for the orthopedic progress report. Raising my arm up I was 140 degrees compared to 145 on the right. An improvement from about 30 degrees when first measured. Rotating out, I was 25 degrees versus 35 on the right. Again, a big improvement from the -5 degrees I started with. Yes, the muscle was actually pulling my left arm in 5 degrees to the right so I couldn’t hold it straight ahead when the arm was bent 90 degrees (as if typing).

The question is would this be enough to satisfy the orthopedist? I was nervous about my follow-up last Friday. I really didn’t want to face a MUA. I got up early and got my shoulder warmed up and stretched out for my visit. Although he said I still have work to do, he was pleased with the range of motion. He also took x-rays which showed the bone is healing nicely – although there is still some remodeling that will take several weeks. Now that he’s sure the bone is getting stronger, he wants me to focus on building strength while still doing stretching.
A quick slip on the ice has caused a lot of difficulty. Looking back, I can’t help but wonder if some early but gentle, passive manipulation that wouldn’t have risked further fracture would have minimized the range of motion issues I’m working through. While the healing is slow, it’s amazing how your body can repair itself.

Bunny Movies

We don't subscribe to the Starz network, but I love the 30 second bunny movie parodies that they have available online. The latest is for the first Rocky movie. They also have one for Brokeback Mountain which is pretty funny. There is an index for these and more here.

Flying Through the Aisles

Looking through Flickr photos, I ran across this shot [NOTE: Photo removed 26 February 07] by carlosluis that I thought was hilarious. He has a series of shots showing his son Vincent in grocery shopping carts. I thought this one having the illusion of speed was the best. The eyes, the hat, and the arms just bring it all together. He has a lot of other great photos of his kids, hummingbirds, flowers, etc. A very nice collection.

Films From National Archive

Google Video has more than 100 films from the National Archive available for viewing or downloading. Here is a link to a few from the Department of the Interior. There are several WWII documentaries and a few films about space flight. There are a lot of interesting films -- some that remind me of films I saw in grade school. I watched a documentary about the making of Boulder Dam (warning -- a huge download for a 30 minute film). There are some interesting shots covering the whole process from diversion of the river through to the finished dam. Having visited Boulder Dam a couple years ago, I was astounded by the construction feat as well as the conditions the workers had to endure. It was really hot when we were visiting. I can't imagine establishing the infrastructure necessary to build a dam under those conditions.

I'm sure by now there is a lot of trash on Google Video. However, it's nice that films like these are available on the web for a wide audience.

Face Sites

I ran across a couple sites that deal with faces.

The first, Artnatomy, is a neat Flash site that illustrates the anatomical basis of facial expressions. There are quite a few muscles used to make expressions. Click on the level II portion and play with the sliders and the many muscles to click on.

The folks at TurnYourHead will recreate your profile in a turning made of wood.

Greatest Screenplays

Thanks to Michael at the Neverending Rainbow blog (see the link in my what I’m reading list in the right column), I found the Writers Guild of America website and their list of the 101 greatest screenplays as judged by WGA members. There are a lot of great movies on the list – some that we have on DVD and many we love to watch again and again. For me, a good story is an important foundation for a good movie (although Dianne might disagree with that given some of the “garbage” I like to watch).

I’m a big John Huston fan and was glad to see The African Queen, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and The Maltese Falcon all made the list. Being a Bogart fan, it was good to see Casablanca on the list as well.

We just recently saw Lawrence of Arabia. Not only is the story good, the cinematography is beautiful. I learned that almost all the travel scenes in that film show things moving left to right to emphasize the journey aspect of his life. Another David Lean directed movie, the Bridge on the River Kwai, also made the list.

Some great Hitchcock movies made the list: Psycho, Rear Window, and North by Northwest. Those are probably my favorites.

Other notables I saw were The Best Years of Our Lives, Patton, Dr. Strangelove, Cool Hand Luke, The Grapes of Wrath, The Wild Bunch, and Groundhog Day.

There are even a few of Dianne’s favorites including The Sixth Sense and Silence of the Lambs. Check out the complete list.

Spring has Sprung

The first picture on the right was taken outside our place on a clear day in mid-January. I caught one tenacious, dried up maple leaf hanging on the tree. It’s a small example of the brown winters here. We had very little snow this year due to the relatively warm temperatures, so most of the time we were looking at brown grass and dried leaves. This dormant period in Southern Ohio seems more dreary and lifeless to me than it did growing up in Minnesota. There the snow covered most of the barren landscape. Although the trees were bare, a cold, clear day there with light reflecting off clean snow just didn’t seem so depressing.

What a difference 3 months makes. We are now several weeks into Spring and it seems like everything is blooming like crazy. In the second picture, I caught a bee looking for nectar in the blossoms of a tree outside out front door (click on the photo for a larger version). I posted several other flower photos on Flickr of trees and bushes around our complex. Scroll through the photo stream to see them all. I’m always amazed at the transformations associated with the changing seasons. The transition from the dormant Winter to the Spring renewal is one of my favorites.

Pimp Your Ride

Need a little extra bling for your car? Are the spinner rims just too commonplace for you? Check out these LED car rims I saw on the Gizmodo site. There is a video here. The idea is similar to the Fantazein clocks that display time and scrolling messages that appear to be floating in air. By synchronizing the LED movement to the on/off state, an illusion of a static image is created. These rims have full color LEDs to give a full color image. The rims are also programmable via a wireless network so you can change the display as you’re driving along. Sounds neat except for the 12k + price tag.

Tulip Mania

This weekend, Dianne's sister Michelle was visiting. On Saturday, we went to the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden to see their 'Zoo Blooms' event. It's an annual event where this year they planted 80,000 tulips around the zoo. It's a bonanza of spring color with all the tulips, daffodils, and all the flowering trees and shrubs. Even though it's not that far away, Dianne and I haven't been to the zoo in many years. I think the last time was for a Barenaked Ladies concert. We didn't really have a chance to look around. It's funny how we don't always take advantage of local special events or visit local sites unless we have visitors to spur us on.

We saw quite a bit of the zoo. The insect house was really interesting. The smelliest place was the Cat House. Being allergic to cats, I did a very quick run for the exit and waited for Dianne and Michelle. The bird exhibit wasn't much better. They need to work on the ventilation in those buildings. I posted several photos on Flickr including this one showing Dianne and Michelle looking at one of the tulip beds. Scroll through the recently posted photos here.

Marx's Bagels

A couple weeks ago, Dianne and I went to Marx's Hot Bagel Factory in Blue Ash. There is a large sign on the door that says "This is an experience, not a restaurant. Owner not politically correct. Enter at your own risk." We've been going there off and on since we moved here so we knew what to expect.

It was a busy day. The counter was full and there was a large line of people waiting to place orders at the register. While waiting in line, Dianne spotted some people leaving their seats at the counter so we got out of line and sat down. John Marx the owner, affectionately dubbed "The Bagel Man", was working near that spot. He seemed pretty wound up with all the customers. Fortunately, one of the employees came over to wait on us before he got there. ALL the employees there hustle or The Bagel Man chews them out. We knew what we wanted, ordered, and paid promptly when we got our bagels.

The Blue Ash location of Marx's Hot Bagels is Kosher. We were chatting about the Marx experience and Dianne asked if I remembered when we saw The Bagel Man wait on someone many years ago who asked for ham or bacon on their bagel. Boy did he go off on one of his rants! No sooner did Dianne mention that when the Bagel Man gets on the restaurant speaker and yells to people in line to get over to the counter and order rather than standing in line at the register. Then he takes out his referee whistle and gives it a big blast so they know where to go.
The first people ordering from him give little bits of their request at a time. It's hard to know if he's paying attention since you say one thing and he walks away. However, he expects you to yell the rest of your order so he'll get everything at once. When The Bagel Man returns and hears more of the order he starts ranting to the customer about the right way to order. After a couple more rounds of this, the customer finally asks "why do you have to be so mean?" That softens him up a bit and when he comes back with the take out bagels he gives an extra couple bagels in a bag with some instructions how to keep them.

The next couple ordering comes over and the woman asks The Bagel Man for a Reuben bagel sandwich. He replies we don't have that and she comes back with I'll just have corned beef on a bagel. That sends him over the edge so he grabs the microphone and yells to one of the customers he recognizes in line and asks him to come over and explain to this lady why we don't have corned beef – this is a kosher place (although I understand it's possible to make kosher corned beef). It was a classic déjà vu moment for us.

You can read more about the Bagel Man story here and experiences at the restaurant here. Most important for me, I think he makes a great bagel product. Whether he's blowing a whistle, wearing a beanie, or looking at you through the bagel glasses, you are in for an experience if you go to Marx's Bagels while John is working.

Some New Gadgets

I found a couple new gadgets (at least new to me) while surfing this weekend.

For the cook in the house, these "foodloops" look pretty interesting. Tying up food with twine is always such a hassle. These look silicone based like the baking mats and hot pads now available.

For the readers, you know it's difficult to read a book with one hand -- especially a paperback. This ThumbThing is a great, simple idea to keep a book wide open with one hand.

For the builder who aspires to be the next American Idol, this Edison style phonograph kit is pretty neat. You record your voice on plastic cups. I know, it's easier to use the microphone built into your computer.

And for all you snowboarders, I'm sure this will be on your list for the summer months.

Instant Hair Removal

Dianne has been growing her hair for years. It was getting long -- just past her shoulder blades. I thought it was great! However, the long hair was driving her nuts. The split ends, the tangles (especially after riding her motorcycle), and the extra work to wash and dry was not making her happy. I knew the increasing frequency of complaints about the long hair signaled it wasn't going to last much longer. Alas, today was the day.

I looked around the web for short hairstyles I thought would be good. We narrowed it down to four options and took them to the salon this morning. We went to the Identity Salon & Spa in Kenwood. The stylist bundled her hair and snipped it short so it could be donated. Here is the style she ended up with. It's a quick picture I took with the camera phone when we had brunch at First Watch after her appointment. I think it looks nice and will be much more manageable, but it's going to take me a few days to get used to the missing pony tail. You can click on the photo to get a bigger view and also click here to see a side view of the new doo. Wow it is short in the back!

New TV and Old TV

One of the new shows I've been sucked into is Bravo's Top Chef. Michael has a really nice summary of the show on his blog called the Neverending Rainbow. In short, it's a cooking competition/elimination show. The cooking, the personalities, and the influence of their backgrounds or events happening in their lives all make the show interesting. Because I like cooking, I enjoy this series more than the Project Runway fashion challenges. I'm cheering for Miguel, Harold, Tiffani, and Lee Anne. They all come across as strong chefs. From what I've seen so far, Miguel also has a great attitude and tries to have fun with the challenges. I think Stephan is also strong, but his arrogant attitude is too much for me. How many times can he use sommelier in a sentence?

If new TV doesn't have what you're looking for, I just heard that AOL has implemented their deal with Warner to have old television series available on broadband. Here is their website if you want to check out the offerings. I haven't tried it yet -- I'd be curious to hear comments on the service. Personally, I don't know who would want to watch old episodes of the Adventures of Brisco County Jr. or Pinky and the Brain. But an old F Troop now and then wouldn't be too bad. There were some funny moments around Fort Courage. I could see my Dad watching episodes of the F.B.I.

Blog Slug

I have been a blog slug. I had a business trip to upstate New York in mid-January. The day I arrived, the temperature was around freezing. There had been some freezing rain which delayed the arrival of my flight. I drove from the airport to the hotel and the road seemed fine. I parked and opened the door and when I stood up to get out of the car, I slipped and fell. Dianne has a nice picture of the event on her blog. Although the roads were fine, the parking lot was a sheet of ice. I came down hard on my shoulder, and it turned out that I cracked my humerus. That was about nine weeks ago, so the bone should be healed. However, my range of motion in the shoulder is far from normal and I can't lift anything. I've been in physical therapy for about two and half weeks and that has helped, but I have a long way to go. It's amazing how a little tumble can really set you back. Trying to keep up with work and teaching on one arm has been a struggle. Dianne has been taking care of me and taking care of most everything around the house! What a saint!

Animal Crossing - Wild World

Last week we picked up copies of the new Animal Crossing game for the Nintendo DS. If you've played Animal Crossing before, you'll pick this up quickly. All your favorite characters (I like K.K. Slider) are there. I've noticed a couple changes, but they are easy to figure out by talking to the townspeople. I've set up Earltown and here is a picture of me in front of my new house. The Yankee Star design is starting to catch on around Earltown.

We've tried the DS to DS communication-very easy. We were able to exchange apples and pears. We've set up the Wi-Fi connection, but haven't tried it yet. Being able to have visitors in town while you're doing other things adds a new dimension to the game.

Guitar Hero

Dianne got an early Christmas present of the guitar controller for the Sony PS2. It's one of those games that is easy to learn, but difficult to master. As songs play, a scrolling fret bar comes toward you which shows what fret buttons to push while strumming to the music. It's a bit like looking at the road through your front windshield. After focusing on that for a couple songs, I had some dizziness that gave me a headache. It's not for everyone.

There is quite a change in difficulty going from easy to medium to hard settings. Dianne is good at it and has unlocked quite a few songs already. She'll be on tour in no time.

First Lego League

On Saturday, Dianne and I went to a First Lego League competition at Scarlet Oaks. In short, students build robots with Lego blocks and program them to perform a predefined set of tasks. Kyle and Tresha's son Trei is the captain for a local team. I was impressed! There were a lot of volunteers needed to keep things moving along smoothly and the kids seemed to enjoy the challenge and all were showing team spirit. It was fun to see the various Lego robots and how they were programmed to perform the tasks. The teams had different approaches, but generally all were pretty good. Legos, and kids, have come a long way since I had Legos. I remember when Lego wheels were new and exciting!

Dianne Saves the Day!

Dianne saved my bacon last Thursday. It was final exam week and my exam was scheduled at 5:30. Unfortunately, a winter storm hit the area about mid-afternoon Thursday. I left work about 4:15 to allow plenty of time for my usual 15 minute commute to campus. I had made copies of the exam on Wednesday night so I wouldn't have to worry about that. I had them in the car with me.

It took me about 20 minutes to go about 4 blocks after leaving the parking lot at works. The roads were covered with snow, but they weren't bad. People were just driving like weirdos! It was the first big snow and people aren't used to driving in snow anyway. Traffic was a mess!

It was quickly apparent I wasn't going to make it in time for the start of class. Fortunately, Dianne had the day off and was at home. I called her and she printed another copy of the exam and went to Raymond Walters to make new copies. She copied a couple pages to get folks started while the department secretary copied the rest.

I got to class almost 2 hours late. But the fun didn't stop there. The exam was 2 hours long and the last student to arrive got there just before 8 PM. I was there until about 10:15! When I went outside, there were only a couple cars in the parking lat and the grounds crew had started to plow. Unfortunately, they had piled a fair amount of snow along the drivers side of my car. I wasn't able to open the door without digging through a snow bank! I didn't get home until almost 11. That's the longest final exam I've ever given. But the students wouldn't have stayed if Dianne hadn't been able to get there quickly and get them started.

Photoshop Contests

I am always amazed what folks can do with Photoshop. Dianne is good with it. Not only can you not always believe what you read, you can't always believe what you see in a photo these days.

The Worth 1000 site has same interesting Photoshop contests to showcase your skills. This contest on irrational phobias was disturbing. After looking through these pictures I think I developed some new phobias.

Panama canal video

Caution -- this video is HUGE and takes several tens of minutes to download with a DSL connection.

Someone made a time lapse movie from a webcam on one of the Panama canal locks. It's a weeks worth of activity compressed into an eleven minute movie. Click here to see the video. Although the camera position changes occasionally, its a neat view of the operation of the locks, tugboats, etc.

Survivorman

I love DVR! It really has changed the way we watch TV. It's also let us find and watch some shows we'd have missed in the past. One of my new favorites is Survivorman. This guy goes into various wilderness sites for a week alone, with minimal equipment and two cameras. He films himself as he hikes, finds or makes shelter, and looks for food. The survival aspects are interesting and his photography is great. It requires a lot of extra work to place the cameras, get the shot, and retrieve them -- especially when hiking! We catch it on the Discovery Science channel. It's worth a watch if it's available in your area.

After watching the Survivorman start a fire using a spindle driven by a bow made with a shoestring, I asked Dianne if she thought we could do that. Of course not was her reply. Most of the time we are wearing Merrell shoes which don't have laces. I guess we need to carry this Altoid survival kit that has parachute cord around it. We'll need fire to burn the zombies.

Vacuum Dust

Have you ever thought it was wasteful to throw away the full vacuum cleaner bags? I guess one persons trash is another persons treasure. Check out this site for some ideas.

Blog Content

I enjoy reading Julie Leung's blog as she shares personal insights which originate from reading other blogs, from her own experiences, or both. I'm amazed how she has time to find gems on the web and distill it down into something interesting that relates to her own observations.

In a recent entry, Julie discussed why one might want to be careful about what is posted on a blog. She's commented on this before and has strict boundaries for her own blog. It makes sense -- I've seen the Star Wars kid video. But what was more intriguing was a link she provided to a "true crime" blog called The Dark Side. I can't vouch for the integrity of the blog, but at face value this person researches blogs of people who have been arrested for committing certain crimes. I was amazed at the content that someone who allegedly committed a crime would post on the web! I found it both disturbing and intriguing. I wonder how many more of these sorts of sites are out there?

Polio

A sad story this week about a polio outbreak not too far from where I grew up. I also ran across this site that has an interesting illustrated story about polio.

Blue Ball

I've been a blogging slug the last month. Teaching has been keeping me busy. I ran across this site today which must have been made by somebody with way too much time on their hands.