Now This Is My Kind Of Democracy

Recently, the (in)famous Barry Bonds home run number 756 baseball sold at auction for more than 3/4 of a million dollars. The buyer, it was revealed, was fashion designer Marc Ekco. Now he's trying decide what to do with it. The twist here is that he has opened up to a vote! He has said that he will let the public decide the final fate of the ball. There are 3 choices available:

1. Put it in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

2. Brand it was an asterisk . . . and then send it to Cooperstown.

3. Send it into space.

I certainly know my vote on this - and those of you who know me well can probably guess my pick pretty quick.

If you are interesting in voting, here's the link. You have until 11:59 EST, September 25th 2007 to vote

New Avalanche Uniforms

Well, the new design for the Colorado Avalanche uniforms has been revealed. And I have to say that, while I will miss the old design (mostly because that's the one I already own), the new ones aren't bad at all. It will probably take me a few games to get used to them, but that's only to be expected.

If you want to check them out, you can see the slide show here.

Oh Sweet Jeeebus, Thank You!

I just found out that a meeting I thought I had to attend tomorrow night has been cancelled! Which means I'm off the hook. This bodes well for the day.

And yes, I am looking at meeting minutes and agendas at 6:00 in the morning.

Idiots!

I'm surrounded by them and they are preventing me from getting my work done!

Random Quote

"So we're living on top of a quite randomly constructed heap of technologies that were once new, and that now we don't even think of as technology. People think technology is something we bring home in a box from some kind of future shop."
~William Gibson, author

Santa Fe Trip

In my post last Tuesday, I mentioned that there was more to tell on NPS project, but it would have to wait until there was some more time. Well, this morning there's more time, so here we go:

Part of this NPS project actually involved the three of us having to go out to Santa Fe for a couple days of training over Labor Day weekend (I'll refer to the other two students as H and J, just to help keep things straight). We were there from Thursday to Saturday evening, which was a little annoying but not too bad as business trips go. And considering that Santa Fe was a good 30 degrees cooler than Phoenix, well there are worse fates in life. It was an interesting trip, however.

We had to fly into Albuquerque because Santa Fe doesn't really have an airport. Okay, they have one, but it's basically a little strip of concrete, a guys with a pair of binoculars and a walkie-talkie, and an old sock on a stick. So Albuquerque it was. The flight was fine, no problems (not like Journey's and my trip to San Francisco). From there we had to drive to Santa Fe, which isn't too bad a drive, even if it is on I-25. The only problem is that our rental car was a little 4-cylinder, so trying to go up hills at 75 mph was a little challenging, but we made it fine.

Once we got into town, we found our hotel and right away knew that things were going to be "interesting." The Best Western we were staying at was right next to a closed down pawn shop advertising used guns in its windows, and there were a couple of police cars parked in the hotel's parking lot. These are not good signs. We checked in and headed up to our rooms. Mine was fine, if a little funky smelling (a few hours with the window open took care of that), and H's room was fine. But when J opened the door to her room, we found that the TV and lights were on, the bed was unmade, and there was a brief case sitting on the table. Luckily, there wasn't anyone standing there. We did, however, all go right back down stairs and reported this. The guy at the counter apologized and gave J another room, which was good. But it was what he said while doing this that disturbed us. He explained that since the doors had the swipe key cards, there was no way to quickly determine how many keys there were for each room. And how it was better when the keys were real keys because then you knew that there were only two of them. Yes, he's right about this, but J really didn't want to be told that!

From there we took the desk clerk's recommendation, and went over to a little place called the Blue Corn Cafe and Brewery, not far from the hotel. Pretty good. If you're ever in Santa Fe, I would recommend giving it a try. They have their own microbrews on tap - and you can get a sampler platter of all of them! - and their food was actually very good. Mostly Southwest fusion - a mix of Sonoran, Chihuahuan, and general Tex/Mex-ish foods. Just be prepared, some of the dishes are really spicy! I'm perfectly fine with spicy food, so I was happy, but some other people aren't. If you're one of those, you may want to check with your server before you order.

Friday was our first day in the office. That's when we started to get the details on our various projects and what the CLI program was. After a few hours of that, we (me, H, J, and our NPS contact) grabbed some lunch before heading out to Pecos National Monument. Pecos was cool, but we had to brave the threat of rain and coyote calls.

That night, H, J, and I went down to the Plaza for dinner at a place called (amazingly enough, given our trip to Pecos) the Coyote Cafe, at their Cantina. One of the really nice things about this place was that it was on an up-stairs patio, so you could see out into the rest of the Plaza and do some people watching while you ate. Unfortunately, their margaritas weren't anything special, but the food was pretty good and after a long day, we were all glad to just sit back for a while, eat, chat, and laugh. We tried to go out bar hopping after dinner, but we were all so tired that we only made it one place before calling it a night - at about 9:30.

Saturday morning was more training in the office, before going to a little place in the middle of nowhere for a lunch of green chile stew. I wish I could remember the name of this place, but it's gone. Oh well.

After lunch we went back to the office to pick up our stuff and hit the road for Albuquerque. Not five minutes after we got onto I-25, however, we got caught in a major rain storm. We couldn't see lanes on the road and it was starting to hail, so we joined the crowd of people pulling off onto the shoulder for a while to let the worst of the storm pass. Luckily, we only had to wait about 10 minutes or so before it was safe to start off again. Still not fun driving, but safe enough. We spent most of the drive back to Albuquerque either running from one storm or watching another to see if it was going to swing our way. We made it just fine, but it was not one of my more pleasant driving experiences.

All in all, it was a pretty good trip. We learned a lot, had some really good food, and made it back in one piece. And best of all, since it was Labor Day weekend, we still had two days before we had to go back to work!

A Short (And Carefully Worded) Explanation

About yesterday's post. There have been rather nasty department politics brewing around here recently. Yesterday some of the grad students had a meeting, during which we "discussed" these politics. In general, people were in agreement as the grad student position on this particular topic (which I'm not going to go into, because it involves current grad students and it's really an internal matter which needs to stay internal at least for now). I however, thought that a degree of mob mentality was beginning to take and that people were starting to go too far in their calls to punish these particular grad students. And I agree that they need to be punished. What they've done is unacceptable as far as we're concerned. But, I feel that there are different degrees of "crime" here, and that there should be some reasonableness to their punishment.

In other words, I was trying to be the voice of reason in a situation where many people didn't want to be reasonable. And in a few cases, people equated reasonableness with acceptance or tolerance. That's most definitely not the case, here. Anyway, after the meeting I received a couple of emails in which their authors gave me both barrels. Not fun.

Luckily, today things seem to have calmed down some, and one of those email authors actually wrote again to apologize, which was greatly appreciated. Hopefully, from here we can proceed in a sane fashion and take care of this tastiness.

I Don't Need This Right Now

Too much stress today. I wish I could just get out of here and go home. But I can't. It's bad enough I've found myself listening to Iggy Pop today, which is not exactly office music. Okay, enough complaining, back to work damnit!

Madtv - Apple I-rack

I know this has been out a while, but if you haven't seen this yet, you must!

Another Year Has Begun

I know it's been a little while since I last posted, so I thought I would give a brief update on what's been going on recently. Most of my time has been taken up with the beginning of the semester. This is my last year of course work, so I'm trying to finish getting in the classes I need. Not much in the way of real exciting or interesting classes this time around, but that's university life I guess. And as with the beginning of any new school year, there are a bunch of new graduate students who are running around looking scared and stressed and trying to figure everything out. Fortunately, this looks like a pretty good class, and I think almost all of them will make it. But it's going to take them a couple weeks to get into the swing of being a grad student. And as I seem to be one of the people they can most easily come to for help/advise/coffee, this means a another few weeks of them randomly stopping in to see me. I really don't mind this (I was once a first-year and can remember wanting to have someone I could go to for help), but occasionally I would like them to go away so I can get my work done. And there are a couple of them in particular who hang around far longer than they should. "Yes, it's been nice chatting with you, but it's been half an hour and I need to get back to work." But I know all this will pass in time - I just have to keep reminding myself of this.

While classes aren't anything special, at least my TA work is more interesting this year. Half of my time is still working for The Overlord, mostly doing web design and tech support as usual. But he's a good person to work for, and he has more money than he knows what to do with, so I can't really complain. My other TA work, however, is much more exciting. Myself and two other grad students are going to be working on a National Park Service Cooperative Agreement contract. Each of us has been given a different Cultural Landscape project to work on in conjunction with the Cultural Landscapes Inventory (CLI) program. CLIs are basically how the Park Service tries to preserve landscapes which hold special cultural significance beyond simply the buildings and structures. For example, a CLI project would look at an entire ranch, and not just the barn and bunk house. While some of the work will be simple data entry, there will also be some research and some work on updating National Register nominations, which is why NPS brought in a bunch of historians to do this work. We will be taking landscape architect speak and translating it into National Register speak. Once I'm done with this project, I can legitimately say that I have experience working in preservation at the city, state, and regional levels, and I can list a city historic preservation program, a SHPO (State Historic Preservation Office), and NPS as past employers. These are all good things to have on your resume! (And, yes, I am aware that I sound like a big geek here.)

There's more to tell on this NPS thing, but I'll save that for a little later when I have some more time!

We've Been Warned

We have been warned for years that video games were bad for us. While this story certainly proves it, I'm guessing this isn't exactly what our parents were thinking when they issued those dire warnings.

Thanks to Propsqueen for passing this on to me!

---

Update:I came across this story from the Arizona Republic. See?!? They are out to get us!

You Found Me Where?

As part of this blog, I have a stat counter which not only tracks the number of hits I receive, but where they are coming from. Before anyone freaks out, it only supplies some basic information. It tells me what city/state/country the hits are coming from, what pages they are looking at, how long they stay, and if they used a referring link. Okay, yes it gives me the IP address, but it does not attach a name or full physical address to it. There are some I've learned who they are, but that's because I already know them. I can recognize the IP address of people like Journey, Brett, and my friend Propsqueen (I'm not posting her link because I don't know if she wants it out there or not). Some others I can guess because I know where they are from their blogs and I can make an semi-educated guess. Everyone else, complete mystery who you really are.

One of the most interesting things about the stat tracker is the referring link information. The vast majority of the time it either says "No referring link" - meaning that person used a bookmark or typed in my URL directly - or it's a search engine hit - right now I'm getting a lot of hits off "new NHL uniforms."

But every so often a hit comes in from some completely unexpected location. For example, I have had one this morning from "Bike Forums." The fuck? I've never posted on "Bike Forums" - hell, I didn't even know "Bike Forums" existed. So, I followed the referring link to find out what I had to do with this particular forum. Turns out, this particular thread is debating the ACLU, and someone had copied and pasted one of my posts (the one on the footbaths at the University of Michigan-Dearborn), and then given me credit for it and proved a link to the post.

Personally, I find it rather interesting and more than a little amusing that I'm starting to pop up in random places like this. I did not start writing here because I was looking to spread my views of make a mark on cyberspace or anything of that nature. It simply was a way to entertain myself and have some fun. Not that I'm necessarily surprised mind you. I know how quickly and how far things can spread online, and I know how long they remain out there (that's a story for another time - got keep people coming back at least some!). And I certainly am not opposed to people doing this sort of thing. As long as people give me credit for my stuff, and don't change it or use it out of context, I really don't care.

---

By the way, probably the funniest hits I get are from people looking for porn. I have a post on the "12 Days of Christmas - Hawai'ian Style" (a song I grew up hearing every year). Well, in the lyrics, instead of spelling 6 like this "six" it's spelled "seex" - because that's the way 6 is said in Hawai'ian pidgin (the local/slag way of speaking). So I get hits from people searching for "sex" with two E's.

It Continues

Internet access is still flaky - even university sites don't always load!

I just spent an hour and a half in a pointless meeting about things I already knew, but that I was required to attend anyway.

And I have another meeting this afternoon, also about things I already know but that I am required to attend anyway.

Well, That Didn't Take Long

It's not even 8:30 in the morning yet and already I'm annoyed. Yeah yeah, I know, me being annoyed at something isn't exactly front page news or anything. The fact that it happened so early in the day is a little impressive, however. First was the guy who was completely incapable of making a left turn at an intersection. They have finally laid down the light rail tracks outside my apartment. With that, I now have to go out the back gate and use the light to make a left. Well, the guy in front of me today pulled out into the intersection and waited for on-coming traffic to clear so he could make his turn. Unfortunately, there was a enough on-coming traffic that the light went yellow and then red before he could get across. This complete waste of oxygen, however, didn't complete the turn. No, he waited on the tracks in the middle of the road.

You are in the intersection, dumbass! Finish making your turn instead of holding up traffic and creating a major hazard! If trains were running, he would have been roadkill.

The next fun was one of those drivers who knows that the right-hand lane is about so end so they speed up and try to get ahead of as many people as possible. Unfortunately for this particular young woman, I saw this. And when she was finally forced to merge over, it was behind me. So I, knowing that she was obviously in some great hurry, promptly slowed down to the exact speed limit. Since traffic in the left lane was heavy, she couldn't move over either! Boy was she pissed. But, you know, it's hard to scare anyone when your a little blond girl with over sized "trendy" white sunglasses, driving a bright yellow VW Beetle. And I will freely admit that I take a great deal of rather malicious pleasure in getting in the way of people like her. (Incidental, I came across this article, Tires and Brimstone, yesterday on the nine levels of hell for bad drivers.) About half way to work, she turned off and went another direction, which made me happy and allowed me to speed up to the flow of traffic.

Once I actually reached campus, I had the fun of dealing with all the freshmen moving in today. Actually, freshmen move in began yesterday, but the people today were far worse. I keep reminding myself that I was the same way when I moved into the dorms as a freshmen, so I should really cut them some slack. That being said, however, they still annoyed me.

If things had ended there, I would probably be just fine. But no. Apparently our network is having some kind of shit-fit this morning and I'm only getting intermittent Internet connections (I actually have been writing this in WordPerfect and will copy-n-paste over to blogger when I'm done and have a connection). I have work to do and I really kind of need the network to be functioning. Needless to say, this has officially put me over the top and I can now say:

"I am annoyed. Greatly annoyed."

And it's still not even 9:00 AM. Great. At least having Zeppelin playing is helping some!

It's Golden

To the fans at the Denver/San Francisco game who were yelling out during the moment of silence for Bill Walsh:

It's called a moment of silence for a reason, dumbasses! It's not called a "moment of jackassery"! So shut up and act like you actually have some grace.

Who Turned Up The Heat?

Well, after a relatively mild summer for us in Arizona, things are starting to get hot again. When I say mild, you have understand that I'm talking about the fact that for the last four weeks or so temperatures have been hovering right around 100F. For us, that's mild - usually the end of July/start of August is more like 110 or higher. But this year, it's been kind of nice. And yes, that 10 degrees makes a big difference.

But as of yesterday, it's been getting hotter again. Normally, our average right now is about 105. Yesterday we topped out at 114, breaking the record (previously 113). Today, we're going to be right there again. Most of the time, I don't have to deal with it too much simply because I work inside in the a/c. But, there are some signs when it's getting hot again. For example, you notice that you get hot water out of the tap. More specifically, the cold tap. For whatever reason (and no one knows exactly why), when they built this building, they only installed hot water taps on every other floor. The floor I'm on is one of the ones without hot water. Most of the time, anyway. I'm not talking about room temperature water - no this water is actually warm. And considering it's only 10:30, that's not a good sign.

Be Fair

As I was scanning the news this morning, I came across this story from the New York Times. The gist of the story is that the University of Michigan-Dearborn has decided to install some footbaths across campus. They decided to do this because they have a rather significant Muslim student population (more than 10%). Part of the five-times-a-day prayer ritual Muslims preform involves the washing of feet. Muslim students had been using sinks, which resulted in puddles on the floor and damaged fixtures. So the University plans to install these footbaths to make things easier for Muslims and to deal with the puddles and damages.

This prompted a degree of outrage from some people in the area, who decried the "Islamification" of the University. They argue that the installation of these footbaths would be an unconstitutional governmental support of a religion. I just have one question for these people: Would you have a problem with a university building a chapel on campus? Because nearly every university I've ever been to has had one. It's usually small and off the side somewhere, but it's there. If the installation of a few footbaths is unconstitutional, what about these chapels? Do you think we should tear them down?

Oh, and one more thing, a few footbaths do not mean the "Islamification" of the university! Quit over-reacting and get on with your lives!

More Fun With New Neighbors

I found out something interesting from the apartment manager today. I'm not the only one who has been annoyed by the new neighbors I mentioned last week. Recently, they woke me up one morning at about 5:00 AM or so by breaking something. I wasn't sure what it was, but it certianly was loud enough to wake me. After that, they quieted down enough that I was able to go right back to sleep. Yesterday, however, I discovered what is was they had broken - their own front window! Looks like they did it from the inside, because you can see all the glass shards in the rocks right below the window. I saw this yesterday, but didn't call the manager at the time. I figured the neighbors would take care of it. But when it still hadn't even been cleaned up yet, I decided to call it in. Given my previous encounter with on of these guys, I wasn't entirely sure that they would even know they had a broken window.

So I called the apartment manager this morning. She told me that, in fact, they were aware of it and were working to get it fixed. But, while she had me on the phone, she was wondering if I had had any problems with these guys. Were they too noisey or have they been causing any problems or anything. I admitted, yeah, they were a little too loud for my tastes, and I related the rattling silverware incenident. She informed me that others had reported problems and filed complaints on these guys. And they would be recieving a written notice today, warning them to keep it down or risk being evicted. This is awesome! The manager said that she wasn't going to put up with this kind of behavior. This is even better! Hopefully, the threat will be enough. But if not, I may have a new set of new neighbors.

Mwha Haaa Ha!

I came across this comic today and found it terribly amusing! Click on the image for a lager version.

You can go to "Jet Packs and Time Machines" here.

---

Sorry, had to include this one as well. It was too good not to!

A Weekend in San Francisco

This past weekend, Journey and I went to San Francisco to meet up with my dad's side of the family. The plan was for us to fly into San Fran early evening and then meet up with my family for dinner in Chinatown. Well, that sure didn't work out the way we had it planned. When Journey and I got to the airport, we tried to check in at one of the little "we're-too-cheap-to-pay-for-real-people" computer kiosks. And got a little yellow note on the screen that our flight had been cancelled and we needed to talk to a ticket agent. What the fuck?!? And right at that moment about eight other people when "What the fuck?!?" We tried to talk to one of the people behind the counter, only to find out that this is the first they've heard of this. So we had to go stand in line to talk to a real ticket agent. And, of course, the woman in front of us got the next to last seat on another airline's next flight to San Fran. And since there were two of us, that one remaining seat wasn't going to do us any good. Our original flight was supposed to be at 3:30. The next flight we could get on wasn't until 7:10. So, we decided the only we could do was to go with the 7:10 flight, and in the meantime go get something to eat at a real restaurant. If you have even been through Terminal 2 at Sky Harbor, you'll know exactly what I mean when I say that there's nothing worth eating in there.

After getting some real food in us, Journey and I came back to the airport and hung around for a few hours, waiting for our flight. Which, quite naturally, was delayed until 7:45 because of weather problems in Denver (where that particular plane was coming from). So in the end, we didn't actually get to San Fran until 10:00 PM or so, which was far too late for the planned dinner. Instead, we ended up splitting a cheese, crackers, and bread plate from room service. Oh, and so you know, we were staying here. The only way we could afford it was because we managed to get a discounted, pay-up-front rate, and got the plane tickets from my parents.

Once we actually made it to San Francisco, we had a good time. We spent most of Saturday during the day tooling around with Journey's aunt, who lives about 40 minutes outside the city, but used to live in San Fran proper. So she gave us the nickel tour around town, which was fun and it was a good chance to get to know Journey's aunt. After the tour, Journey and I met up with the rest of my family for dinner. In addition to introducing my future wife to my uncles and my grandfather, we also got the chance to meet my uncles's girlfriends, who I had never met before. Dinner went well, even if my grandfather was a little to free with the wine (knowing that this would likely be the case, I declined a wine glass and just had a Jack and water before dinner, and a single malt scotch afterward). But everyone seemed to be having a good time and getting along well. There wasn't any of the usual family drama which seems to have been par for the course the last few years, and that was a relief! After dinner, Journey and I sat in the hotel lobby bar with my grandfather, his companion, one of my uncles, and his girlfriend for a while, just chatting. After my grandfather and his companion retired, the rest of us went to a little lounge down the street, where everyone else was hanging out listening to some live music. The band was really good and the crowd was into it. We ended up sitting next to some local guy whose music knowledge was beyond anything or anyone I've even known (and considering I wrote a Master's thesis on American folk music, that's saying something). But what impressed me the most was that this guy knew more about music than my father. My father takes a great deal of pride (even if he would never admit it) in the fact that he knows more about music than most people. He almost never misses a question on music trivia, but this was able to answer every single question he was asked!

Sunday morning we had reservations at a very nice restaurant for brunch, where we all ate too much but had a good time together. We also took the time to celebrate one of my uncle's birthday while we were there. And given that he has gone through some real hell in the last few years (and no, I'm not going to be going into that here, that's a family matter), it was really good to see him happy and having fun and back to his old self. He's always been one of my favorite uncles.

After brunch, we went back to the hotel and changed into street clothes. Since Journey and I still had a few hours until we were scheduled to fly back to Phoenix, so we went down to Fisherman's Wharf and wandered around the shops down there. We were going to grab the cable car down, but as we got to the stop, the one coming up the hill was the wrong line, so we decided to catch a taxi instead as we didn't really have enough time to wait for another cable car. Right as we were getting ready to move over to taxi que, however, black stretched limo pulled up and driver offered to take us to Fisherman's Wharf for $5 each. What are we going to do, turn down a $5 ride in a limo? Yeah, right! So we hopped in and headed out. We decided later that he probably was already on his way down there to pick some one up, so why not make a couple of bucks on the side. Worked for us. And let me tell you, it was an interesting ride. Think rally-car race, but in a stretched limo. Actually, it was pretty damn amusing and Journey and I got a good laugh out of it after we got out! We wandered the wharf for a while and picked up some gifts for people, before having to head back to the hotel to pick up our bags and going to the airport.

And the flight back to Phoenix was almost as fun as the flight out. We boarded on time and there were even a few empty seats. But then the pilot comes on and says that it's going to be 20-25 minutes before we can get going because they have to reboot the plane's computer. Now, I've done my share of traveling, but I've never heard of them having to "reboot the plane's computer" before. And during this whole thing, there's a loud sound coming from the plane directly below where we're sitting. It sounded kind of like the pneumatic lug gun they use to change your tires (know what I mean?). And we've heard that sound before, but this was louder and went on longer than either Journey or I had ever heard before. Finally, they got the plane's computer rebooted and we got under way. We got out on the runway, and then pulled over and stopped. The pilot informed us that a switch wasn't working properly, but that they were going to try and fix it out there. Of course, this didn't work and we had to return to the terminal. We all got ready to deplane . . . and he came back on saying that they had a replacement part and it would only take about 15 minutes to replace, so we weren't going to get off the plane after all. Amazingly, replacing the part only took about 5 minutes, but getting the new paperwork, which was supposed take another 5 minutes, really took about 15. I guess that's a wash. By this time, it's 8:00 or 8:15. Our flight was scheduled to take off at 6:30.

Eventually, we took off and the flight to Phoenix was uneventful. No real turbulence or anything, which was nice. But our travel fun wasn't over yet. Oh no, they had one more little surprise for us. We came in for landing at Sky Harbor, only to touch down and then promptly take off again! The only time I've ever had a touch-and-go like that was to avoid hitting some animals on the runway. What was the reason this time? The runway was too short! Again, what the fuck?!? "Too short?!?" Somebody done fucked up! It's not like we had an odd sized plane or anything! So we had the great fun of smacking the runway once, coming back up to speed, taking off again, circling, and being redirected to another runway. By this time, I was listening in on the tower communications and I actually heard them divert another plane to a different runway so we could land. At last we made it down safe. By the time we got our bags, made it to my truck, and got out of the airport, it was after 11:00PM.

We both decided we were going to take yesterday off to recover from our vacation. So we slept late, and had a leisurely lunch before Journey had to head back to Tucson. All in all, I'd say it was a fun trip and we had a good time. The getting there and back sucked, but the trip itself was fun!