Friday, March 30, 2007

Battlestar Office-ica

Sleepydad West Si'ee comes thru with another Youtube Winner...

Ferrell and a Ninja



I don't think I've ever seen Will Ferrell actually back on his heels.. this guy takes the comic initiative right away from him and I don't think he ever quite gets it back...

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Must See Youtube



Hat Tip to Daddy Galindo (a fellow SleepyDad on the West Coast) for pointing me toward this great piece of TV nostalgia..

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Soggy SleepyDad Workfromhome Wednesday

Rainy today. Good soaking rain.
But a pretty pleasant, working-from-home, day all the same.
Watched Bryce this morning while Mama gave her class and met with some students.
A couple of the neighbor kids came over (Blaine and Madison-- both right about Bryce's age) for a few hours and they all played great together.. it was incredible. Admittedly, Blaine's nanny (yes, nanny-- though so far as I've seen she doesn't fly on an umbrella-- har har) came with them and kept a good eye on them.. but they all really were on good terms today, despite the ugly weather. Lunched on grapes, PB&J's, and American cheese.. then everyone went home and had a nap.. including Bryce and Daddy!

Outstanding!

The boys are both still pretty tired-- catching up (or I wish they would) on all the sleep they lost the last 5 days or so while we worked our way through the latest cough/sniffle/sneeze bug that made it's way through our house... the turn of season allergies are making sure that those sniffles stick around a while longer-- Bryce has developed quite a little cough; good thing he loves his cough medicine... but suffice it to say, it's been a series of pretty groggy mornings around here while the boys have been waking 2 or 3 times a night each for one reason or another...

And yeah, while you're wondering, I did actually get some work done during all this activity today-- had the laptop setup in the kitchen while the kids were playing upstairs and was actually able to get quite a bit done. Not such a bad gig.

Just finished watching Monday's 24 on TIVO.. this season is faultering, I'm afraid. Not even the addition of Rick(y) Schroder seems to be saving the day here... did anyone really think it would? Powers Booth's Vice President is becoming entirely too over the top. Monomaniacal to the point, I expect they'll reveal next week that he's got a peg leg and likes to walk the deck...

Similarly puzzled by the Battlestar Galactica season finale-- watched that on Sunday night. It was trippy.. unlike 24, I think the last couple of BSG's may have saved an otherwise terribly plodding and ponderous season.. and yet I'm still just not sure what to make of this "All Along the Watchtower" business... I want to like it. But I'm a little annoyed with this manipulation they're playing with Starbuck.... and the 'we're all cylons' contrivance seemed pretty forced...

Monday, March 26, 2007

Wheelie Ban

Oh Lord help us.. a wheelie ban..

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Moment of Coolness: The Unit

I'm slowly making my way through Season Two of the Unit.
And, as much as I've been enjoying it-- I think I mentioned that it gives me enough of a cloak-and-dagger dose to keep me reasonably happy-- I've been worried about it. The writing can be pretty uneven in places... and some of the plot-lines (as well as some of the script-lines) surrounding the Unit wives can be pretty forgettable.

But tonight, watching episode 12-- the opening scene has our fearless leader, Jonas Blane (Dennis Haysbert is a bad bad man!), being ushered into an apparently secret meeting-- in a basement closet-- with a White House 'undersecretary'.

Then William H. Macy shows up and things really get interesting...
Macy arrives, Haysbert is surprised (as are we).. and a few moments later we learn Macy is taking a turn as the President in this episode...

This scene may have just saved this show for me...

Thursday, March 22, 2007

it's all over

ZeFrank has ended his show-- The Show.
I caught onto a link to one of the episodes-- his rant about procrastination-- a month or two ago.. but I have to admit, I didn't recognize the thorough coolness of this thing ZeFrank was doing..



And now he's ended it.

Is this just a case of absence making the heart grow fonder? constraining supply to generate demand? Like Beanie Babies?

And then, as Crash Davis would say, he hit his dinger and then he hung 'em up.

Hey Manundso.. speaking of in-jokes.. this guy uses them perfectly.. creating a little in-community... his sportracers...

I guess I'll need a few more readers before I'll get sponsorships from whiskey distillers...

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Ed Holden has this very nice picture of Guinness on his Blog

Thursday, March 15, 2007

"Can I at least get a clean goodbye?"

Give a listen as Bill Gates gets pissy after an interviewer asks him about the "Hi I'm a PC" Mac ads...

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Zeroes

Watched the latest episode of 'Heroes' with my wife on Tivo last night.
It was an especially dark episode as they come down toward the end of Season 1.. introduced Malcom McDowell as 'Mr. Linderman'-- doing his usual menacing.. and Sylar getting the best of Suresh.. and Peter?? Oooh Cliffhanger.. and a grim one at that.

When it was over, my wife, who'd never seen the show, looked at me and said "I hate you. I'm never watching another show with you again."

This morning, the kids on Digg.com reveal that this Youtube video was actually created by NBC... good marketing, if you ask me.. is NBC on the Cluetrain?

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Shocking!

This story from CNN this morning:

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Parents of an alleged teenage bank robbing duo said on
national television this week they couldn't comprehend how their daughters could
have, as police and surveillance tape suggest, giggled behind fashionable
sunglasses as they robbed a Bank of America branch last week.
There also was shock at Shooter Alley, a nude dance club outside Atlanta, where co-workers say Ashley Miller and Heather Johnston, both 19, worked the afternoon shift.


Well, that tells me just about everything I need to know.

umm.. okay, Bill..

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Nashville is #1...

Yes, the Predators are best in the NHL.. and that's a big deal here.
But almost more significant is that, according to Kiplinger's Personal Finance, Nashville is their #1 pick for 'Smart Places to Live'...

the sun is up!

Daylight Savings Time cannot get here fast enough!
The boys are getting up these mornings with the early sun.. which means that at 5:30am, we're getting "but the sun is up! it's day-time now! time to get up!!"

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Notes Toward a Unified Theory of the Internet, Part I

The other day on the TWIT podcast, Leo LaPorte and his crew were griping about how all the latest start-ups are cutting the vowels from their company names-- Flickr, loopt, SoonR, Tumblr, just to name a few. John C. Dvorak blamed Flickr for beginning this trend. He's not going back nearly far enough. Look to James Gleick's book, Faster-- the book with the thesis (published in 1999) that we're all so busy, we can't help but multi-task all the time.. attention spans are getting smaller and we're packing more and more activity into each day. And judging by the cover, we're all packing more and more consonants into our book jackets..

SleepyDad definitely concurs with that.. but I always attributed that to the birth of my kids and all the attendant chaos that came with them.

And since we all have to pack more and more into the same 24 hour day, what better to do than to join all the latest social networking sites-- social networking, that thing basically invented by the guys at Amazon with their user comments and recommendations features-- so enter DIGG, MySpace, Technorati, Facebook, etc, etc.

This is the stuff of Web 2.0.
Blogging, Podcasting, RSS feeds, Pipes, mash-ups. We all cease to be readers or receivers. Now we're all producers of content. Bloggers. Podcasters, Parentographers. (Hey, I've done all three of those.) Taking in information, re-formulating, recombining, and then republishing on our own sites and feeds. Three billion little broadcast stations spread out over the globe, chatting about.. about.. whatever's on our minds-- or whatever we're reading about, or whoever we're listening to... and don't worry, the irony's not lost on me. I'm right in there with them.. "Hey Leo Laporte was just talking about this.."

Enter Twitter.. this beautifully simplistic little social web app that asks an easy, and oddly compelling question: What are you doing right now? Why do I want to answer? Why did I sign up and start putting silly notes in there about the cereal I ate the other morning? Micro-blogging. Where do I think it's going? Where is any of this really going? (is there anyone out ther?) What is this thing really for?

The ClueTrain Manifesto guys (click here to read the book), said years ago (I can't believe how many now) that the internet is a marketplace of ideas-- a cacophanous conversation. So is it just enough to get your voice out there in the wilderness? To say, "Hey I'm here andd this is what I'm up to." Does it matter if anyone's reading, listening, subscribing, downloading, mashing-up, piping...

Maybe it will all add up to something. The internet becomes, at worst, a hive mind-- and endless series of Top Ten lists and 'most popular stories'-- at best, it's an incoherent stream of collective consciousness.

Monday, March 05, 2007

The power of Weis

Behold, the power of Weis-- talking about the passing drills he ran for Quinn during yesterday's pro-day 'with representatives from every NFL team in attendance':

''We put him through every throw that any NFL organization would want to see,'' Irish coach Charlie Weis said. ''Now they have enough information to make a critical evaluation, if they didn't have enough on tape already.''

When the man talks about what 'any NFL organization would want to see', does it not just carry such weight? Who wouldn't want to play for a guy who can give you that at the end of your college career?

Yazoo-hoo! "Defy Mediocrity"

Finally.... finally..
I have been trying to find my way to the Yazoo Taproom for more than a year now, but circumstances never seemed to conspire in my favor.

But finally, finally, I managed to coordinate getting a couple of co-workers (my boss and another colleague) to head over there after work on Friday.

And Yazoo did not disappoint.
The taproom is squeezed into a corner at one end of a massive Industrial Revolution-era brick factory-- the old Marathon Motors plant. Accomodations are modest-- this ain't some restaurant-- the place is only open for a few hours, three days a week. This is about the BEER! Room for about 5 tables, a bar to handle 6-7 patrons, and standing room for those who can't find a seat.

Enough about the decor
On tap, they had:

  • Hefeweizen
  • Amarillo Pale Ale
  • Dos Perros
  • Roggen
  • Onward Stout
Of these, I had pints of the Hefe, Pale Ale, and the Roggen. Here are my notes:


  • Hefe: pure, honey golden, cloudy goodness. Yeasty and smooth-- Based on a very unscientific, eavesdropping survey of patrons that afternoon, this clearly the most popular. They serve it with a lemon-- screw the 'Man-law commercial'.
  • Pale Ale: Dark and rich, with that tart, hoppy flavor. Better than the bottled Yazoo that's available locally.
  • Roggen: like the Pale Ale, but with the knobs on the Hoppy Ale flavor turned up a few clicks.. maybe a few too many. Not my favorite.

As for snacks, one of the guys at the table ordered up the Cows Milk sampler-- an assortment of cheeses, fruit, and bread, served with a sampling of 4 or 5 different brews. Again, this isn't a restaurant, and we weren't a group that was too concerned with how 'each cheese is matched to a different beer'. So while the cheese and bread was good, I'll make dinner plans next time I go.

Back to the beer. On the way out, I ordered up two growlers, one of the Onward Stout-- which will wait til next weekend to crack open-- and one of the Sly Rye Porter, a brew they had just added to the chalk-board menu while I was in line to pay. On Saturday night, good friend John (a fellow sleepydad) and I opened the Porter and I have to say, it may be the best of the bunch. Dark as the stout, but smooth and delicious.

Good Morning, Sun!

Well, when I brought the boys home yesterday evening from Mom and Dad's, they were both asleep. It was 5:30 and they'd had a full weekend of a) playing waaaaay past bedtime with friends on Saturday, and; b) eating breakfast, playing boardgames, throwing a ball in the backyard, and generally just having a grand time (as we do most Sundays) with Gramma and Grampa on Sunday.

So I figured-- let 'em sleep a bit. Figured, based on past experience, they'd probably wake up around 6:30pm or so, have something to eat, then want to read some stories and go back to bed.

Well, I'm some kind of fool, I guess, because not only did they not wake up-- they let me change them fully into PJs, in the dark, still snoozing away the whole time.. and they slept through, with a waking spell or two, straight through to 5:00 this morning.

My wife, who slept with them most of the early part of the night, got up and got them breakfast.. but by the time I got up at 6:00, Bryce had already had two breakfasts more or less, and was practically ready to go back to bed!

So suffice it to say, it was a long, busy, but fun weekend.. and far too early a Monday morning for any of us.

I am, I must say though, very grateful to my wife, SleepyMom, for letting me get that extra hour of sleep this morning.

Friday, March 02, 2007

The end of analog..

Interesting post on Engadget today about 'The beginning of the end of Analog TV'.

Got a chance to watch most of an episode of Firefly on our neighbor's gi-normous HDTV last night.. and I have to say, it got the wheels turning.

I've been in awe of HD before, obviously.. but it's never been so attainable.. and it's getting more so, by the week it seems. Samsung 42" Plasmas are going for $1200 or so..

Ahh, maybe next year..