Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Take Your Three Year Old Daughter to Work Day

Just what a studio full of slightly uptight graphic designers with zero kids wants to hear echoing out of the bathroom:

“DADDY! Come wipe my butt!”

Jon scribbled this mess on 01/24/07 at 06:49 PM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

I Need a Real Hobby

It's quite possible I'll live to regret doing this.

Direct QuickTime (plain old glorious MPEG-4) link to the video in case the picture link-thing-y above doesn't work.

Jon scribbled this mess on 01/23/07 at 12:04 AM, best we can tell it fits in the category of iMovie Mondays Regular Post Favorite Entries. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

Sunday, January 21, 2007

The Feel Good Movie of 2007!!

OK, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib is absolutely NOT going to be the feel good movie of 2007. Or any other year for that matter. But it is one of those “important” movies (documentary, actually). You need to see this movie. Especially if you are an American, I think. We Americans did a very bad thing over there, and at the very least, we need to understand what happened. The movie doesn’t explain everything, (nothing could, really), but it’s a step in the right direction.

I don’t normally review movies on this site because A) with sixteen kids at home, Reha and I rarely get out to watch current movies and B) I usually only like movies with lasers and robots or comedies. (Yeah, I liked Serenity and I’m a Star Wars dweeb and I once thought Fletch was sublime, so sue me.)

Anyway, Rory Kennedy has made an excellent and above all, important, documentary of the fiasco of Abu Ghraib. She traces what happened at Abu Ghraib back to 9/11 and interviews both detainees and their US captors. Reminded me of a great article I read in Harper’s about the link between the CIA, the Guantánamo Bay prison, 9/11 and Abu Ghraib.

It’s going to be on HBO at the end of February, I think. Set your TiVO, VCR or whatever device you use and record it. If it comes to your local cineplex, get a sitter or whatever, grab someone and go see it. Watch it and then prepared to be shocked and appalled and chagrinned.

Jon scribbled this mess on 01/21/07 at 07:54 PM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

Friday, January 19, 2007

Alpha Channels are the Bees Proboscis

This is why Zoraster invented 32 bit color (i.e. normal color plus an alpha channel, which “controls” transparency):

So Apple’s Dashboard Widget can show that Salt Lake’s air is hazy and probably not suitable for breathing.

Jon scribbled this mess on 01/19/07 at 02:08 PM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Was Fun While It Lasted

Seventeen seconds after I crossed the finish line at the St. George marathon, I made a personal vow that “I’m never doing something this stupid ever again.” Sort of. Mostly after I crossed the line, I was weepy and limping and exhausted and muttering that gatorade was “Devil water” and why are there so many stupid stairs to walk down in this park?

I get a little loopy at the end of long runs. Plus after you run 26.2 miles, your quadriceps hurt like fire and walking down a flight of stairs is difficult beyond belief.

I also decided that I was going to take a break from running and training. I knew I’d pick it up again, but I was done for a while. Also, I was interested in eating “real food” again, i.e., cheese and ice cream (with that paraffin-esque Magic Shell™ on top, yummy!) for breakfast, lunch, mid afternoon snacking and supper. I went running maybe once in October after the marathon and since then I’ve sat in our large living room chair and watched re-runs of House, Dr. Who and Mythbusters with the kids and could feel myself ballooning as time passed.

It was glorious.

Seriously, I gained about fifteen to twenty pounds. In three months. Probably took a few years off my life and it’s a “bad thing” to yo-yo like that, but I’ll be old when that happens, so it’s worth it, right?

Anyway, I started running again last week. Inside on the stupid treadmill, since it is bitterly cold out.

When I first started running I loved running on treadmills. I was terrible at pacing myself and having a machine do that for me was perfect. Nice and steady and easy on the knees as well. But I grew to dislike it. It’s not because it is boring, though it is. It’s ‘cause I lost the remote control to the DVD player I have down there and I can’t watch anything good. :-]

OK, all of that to say this:

It’s not that bad, picking up running again. Not at all as hard as I thought it would be. I’m taking it easy and not really pushing myself, but I’m pleasantly surprised at how easy it has been to slip back into the groove of running.

Though I’m going to miss cheese. And ice cream. And the chair! What will the chair do without me?! How will it carry on? Who is going to loaf about in the chair?!

Probably Lucas.

Jon scribbled this mess on 01/18/07 at 10:21 AM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

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