I really like the concept of the Bud Light ad campaign of Real Men of Genius. Not enough that I’ll buy that craptacular beer, but enough that I will blatantly steal it.
Today’s Real Man of Genius is the guy who figured out how to make frozen microwavable White Castle sliders (with cheese) and sell that at my local grocer. Its a great dinner when its just me and Dinah at home and she only allows me enough time to nuke something.
As mentioned previously, Jay Marvin has left Chicago after WLS asked him to leave. He’s now doing the 6am-10am (Mountain time) shift at AM 760 Boulder’s Progressive Talk.
For those of us in the Chicago area who still want to listen to Jay, we can hear him from 7am-11am (the central time equivalent) via the audio stream at mms://ccdig.liquidviewer.com/KKZN.
For those of you using not-windows (Linux in my case) I’ve found both xine and mplayer work perfectly with this stream. I’ve been using mplayer if only because I’m not forced to have a visualization.
I finally stopped on my way home and took some quick pictures of Bud’s with my phone. The second one makes me nervous, even though I’m pretty sure its standard operating procedure. (Click on the images for a bigger view.)
FYI, I’m experimenting in this post with using the WPGallery plug-in.
So, I’ve decided that Keith Garner’s Blog is a pretty shitty name for the mental effluence you see on this blog. I’m trying to come up with something better, but I’m drawing a blank.
Any ideas?
As you can maybe tell by the new look, I’ve upgraded WordPress to 1.5. I’ve been very happy with the update for a few reasons:
The biggest win has been the new template system. I can create my look and feel and when wordpress updates, I won’t have to lose what I’ve done. In previous versions of wordpress I was having to update index.php every release, which caused me to not upgrade, even in the case of security fixes.
The downside is that I haven’t yet found a good anti-spam solution. By default, WordPress is pretty good about putting stuff that it thinks is spam into the moderation queue. However, on spam heavy days, I can see myself flushing out 100s of bad messages.
The other problem is that comment spammers have moved on to trackback spamming. Everyone with a WordPress blog (and many with Movable Type) were hammered this weekend with trackback spam. In 1.2.x and 1.5, trackbacks do not go through a moderation step by default, they end up right on the page. From reading other blogs that cover this, it seems to all come from one asshole and counter measures are being worked on. *sigh*
One really cool thing I found while editing has been the Plugin Manager. Its a great tool for plugins it knows about. It lets you know if they are up to date, and if you configure things properly, you can even do one-click installs of a lot of plugins.
The plugin manager led me to the MyNetflix plugin by Jimmy Oliver, which was written for pre-1.5. Since WP 1.5 comes with all the RSS functions, MyNetflix has some namespace collisions due to its included RSS library. The plugin also just dumped the whole queue, which really clogged up the sidebar as I have 124 DVDs in my queue, I would have liked to limit that. You also had to hard code the URL in the php source file, which was silly. It meant you could only ever follow one queue. So, based on Jimmy’s work I created KTGNetflix that fixes these few things. KTGNetflix requires wordpress 1.5. You can call it like ktgnetflix("your rss url") and it’ll show you the top 20 items in your queue or you can specify the limit by passing an integer argument like ktgnetflix("your rss url", 12) . KTGNetflix is now powering the netflix queue you see on the sidebar.
Since Dinah has been in day care, I’ve been taking the train from Metra stop in Roselle. Since I have been parking in the North parking lot, I drive by Bud’s, the former home of BeerTuesday, almost daily.
Today I ask for a moment of silence, my brothers and sisters in mass alcohol consumption, because on my way to the train today I noticed large FOR RENT signs in the windows of the establishment now formerly known as Bud’s. Rubbing my eyes, I looked again, and they were still there, but this time I also noticed that the sign board was devoid of message.
There is a yellow 8.5×11 sheet of paper taped on one the doors which probably has a message of thanks for the years Bud’s existed, or at least a “sorry, we’re closed for good!” As I had 4 minutes to catch the train, I didn’t stop to read it, but I will on the way home and try to take a picture with my phone.
If they died due to missing a large influx of cash each Tuesday or because their service and beer selection just went into the shitter, we may never know. But please, I beg, a moment of silence for an establishment that: gave us food when we were hungry; that reserved our corner 99% of the time; that let us master darts; that thought were were thespians; that gave us the centurion club to finish over and over; that saw Brian White drink said club faster than any man in history; that saw a beer tab and tip much larger than 4 men should reasonably create; that gave us waitresses who were, after training by us, without parallel; that taught us it was a bad night when “(beer + liquor) > food” evaluated to false; that gave us shelter in times of peace and times of strife; and, most importantly of all, that gave us alcohol when we were sober.
The article Obesity fight nips at Southern eats talks about the South and its fight with calories. It specifically mentions a bar in Decatur, Georgia named Mulligan’s, which I couldn’t find a web page for.
In any case, I think I need to travel to Mulligan’s two have two of the specials on their menu that are mentioned in the news article. Both of these stir up feelings of revulsion and hunger.
The “Hamdog”: a hot dog wrapped by a beef patty that’s deep fried, covered with chili, cheese and onions and served on a hoagie bun. Oh yeah, it’s also topped with a fried egg and comes with two fistfuls of fries.
the “Luther Burger”: a bacon-cheeseburger served on a Krispy Kreme doughnut.
[Update: Fark also had a thread on the Hamdog. Thanks to the forums I was directed to an article with pictures at Consumption Junction. The ads on that page are totally NSFW, you have been warned.]
This morning the Chicago Tribune had the article 25,999-pound fashion statement about International‘s new CXT “severe service truck.” Asshats like Ahston Kutcher think they are all the rage. This is such a gross vehicle I threw up a little in my mouth while reading the article.
This just reminds me of the old joke of the Kenworth Pilgrimage, which it seems someone took too seriously. Also, its makes the P-Diddy/Puff-Daddy/Whatever-the-fuck-we’re-calling-him-this-week-and-for-saying-this-he’ll-bust-a-cap-in-my-ass/Sean “Puffy” Combs Diet Pepsi commercial from the Superbowl much less funny.
[Update: I don’t know how I missed this in my first reading, but this quote was pointed out to me (emphasis mine):
Daughter Shaylin, 15…adding that her Hummer is more practical to take to school, although “the International is way cooler. Now at school they call me either The Hummer Girl or The International Girl.”
If you’re being called “The Hummer Girl” I suspect that 1) you’re very popular and 2) its not due to your parents’ car. Either way, “the Hummer is more practical to take to school”? Sure, if you’re in IRAQ!]
My Firefox extention of the week is GooglePreview. Just thought you should know.
Today I walked by the Sun-Times building while returning from lunch. Its coming down pretty quick. I snapped off two quick photos with my camera. Part of what lead us over there was the earth-shattering thumping from the machine destroying what remains of the road.
Rachelle Bowden once again has bested me by doing a series of shots of various stages of destruction.
I should also point out the time-lapse flash animation of the deconstruction.