Fatherhood

pre-Halloween photos

1 Comment

Sarah and I finally got around to taking some Halloween pictures of Dinah.

Yes, its not actually Halloween yet, but we wanted to have the pictures on Halloween (or just before) to show off and so the grandparents can do the same. We took these pictures out in our backyard. Ideally, I should have done it earlier in the day when the sun would have been more to the east, as the forest is west of us. However, they turned out great anyway. Also, she’s not sitting up on her own yet. The ones where it looks like she is, she’s either propped against something or Sarah moved her hand away as I snapped the picture in the scant seconds before she starts to fall over.

I’m a biased observer, as she is my kid, but damn she’s cute.

Politics

I do not vote with my heart, he who votes with his heart has forgotten the face of his father

2 Comments

I listen to talk radio from time to time, although a lot less often than I used to.

A phrase that keeps coming up in discussions about the issues in the upcoming election is “I have to vote my heart.” For some reason, that really bothers me. The heart can be foolish and have knee-jerk reactions to issues. It is also used a lot in discussions that have people that seem to vote on only one issue.

I’d rather that people vote with their mind. Voting with ones mind implies thinking about issues. It also implies that one votes for a candidate as a whole, weighing their stances on all the issues. I am all for the right for anyone to vote, but I really wish more people with be informed voted. Voting with ones mind means being informed.

[Update 10/30: I just wanted to add a clarification that I forgot when I originally wrote this. One should not ignore their heart when they are thinking about issues. The heart should always inform the mind, but it shouldn’t be the only factor.]

Omphaloskepsis

Busy time….

Leave a comment

I’ve been kinda quiet the past few weeks, and I’ll be increasingly quiet the next few. We’ve hit the busy time of the year at work and it doesn’t help that I’ve been Mr. Perpetual-tiredness lately. Luckily, work’s busy time will be over on Nov. 8th. Then I’m on vacation for week.

I figure if I’m going to have this blog I should post at least once a week, so I’ll try to stick to that, but we’ll see what happens.

Beer

B to the E, boyeeeee!

Leave a comment

Anheuser-Busch is taking a step and combining two of my favorite beverage additives: caffeine and alcohol.

The maker of No. 1-selling Bud Light beer said Monday it is launching a new brew under the Budweiser label that will be infused with caffeine, guarana and ginseng–a combination it promises will be both lightly “sweet and tart.” It is the first beer to include caffeine, the brewer said.

Unfortunately, the problem with this plan is 1) they make Bud and Busch, etc and 2) they are adding other crap like ginseng to the mix. The article in the paper I read this morning is that they are trying to cash in on the crazy of mixing Red Bull with anything that has alcohol. As for their claim to be the first beer to include caffeine, I doubt it. Maybe the first good old-fashioned macrobrew to add caffeine, but there has had to have been a beer with caffeine before.

I have drank quite a few stouts brewed with coffee such as Bell’s Java Stout and Redhook‘s now-retired Doubleblack Stout. Both of those had to have had some caffeine in them. However, they were not marketed as a alcohol enhanced energy drink nor an energy enhanced adult beverage. (They also weren’t marketed as a cathartic, but they could have been!)

The new brand’s name is a mouthful: B-to-the-E — short for Budweiser with something extra.

And there is the worst part: One of the dumbest product names ever. Be

Books

Notes from the scarlet fields of Can’-Ka No Rey

5 Comments

In a previous post I mentioned that the end was near for the Dark Tower series from Stephen King. It came out on 9/21 and I finished reading it this past Tuesday morning 9/28. A little bit slower then I thought, but its a big book coming in at 845 pages. It probably should have been two books. I’ve been meaning to post about it all week, but I wanted to reflect on it before I did. I also don’t want to drop too many spoilers here as I know many people haven’t gotten to the book yet. (Hello to my blog follower from Finland, where its unknown when the book will be out.)

As a quick aside, I want to talk about my attachment to the series before I go on. I’ve been trying to think of a way to say how much I enjoyed the series as a whole. The only thing I can come up with is the following: I was at the book store the day the last three books where out waiting to jump back into Mid-World (and any place else the tale would take us, say true.) On average, its taken me less than 4 days to read each book. The only thing getting in the way was either work or sleep (and with the last two books, my daughter.) The only other book series I’ve done this with has been Harry Potter.

I wanted the time to reflect on the book, as my initial impressions where not the ones I know I will have long term. Part of the reason reflection was necessary was due to the fact that I was saying goodbye to at least 4 characters (maybe 5) I’ve followed for somewhere around 13 years. (I don’t remember when I read my first book from the series, but I know I was in high school, so I’m putting it in the middle of that time period.) Due to the attachment I’ve grown to these fictional characters any goodbye would be tough. In general, and I’m sure any author will tell you, endings are tough. (That’s probably why so many authors suck at endings, but that’s a different post.)

The other factor is what I’ll call The Matrix Revolutions Factor. After The Matrix Reloaded I had all sorts of ideas of where the story should go and what would be interesting ends to subplots. Obviously, The Matrix Revolutions didn’t match up with what I had in mind. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but what appeared on the move screen didn’t surpass my expectations. It just met them, if not was a little lower than them. (This reminds me, I should go back and watch the movie now that some times has passed.)

**** WARNING: I can’t help but add some potential spoilers in the next few paragraphs. You have been warned! (I’ll also drop some more protection, to be nice.) ****
Continue reading Notes from the scarlet fields of Can’-Ka No Rey →

Entertainment

I ain’t getting on no plane!

Leave a comment

My friend Val, who is also the secretary at our church, is quoted in the Chicago Tribune religion section in the article Still Mr. T: The `T’ is for testimony. She was at Willow Creek Community Chuch when Mr. T. was there speaking. I was talking to her Wednesday morning and she mentioned that she was interviewed by the Trib so I was on the lookout for the article.

The article as pretty interesting as it talked about Mr. T’s faith and how he came back to it. I also liked that many of the people who were at the service weren’t really aware or remembered Mr. T when was at his celebrity zenith.

Being a child of the 80s, I’m all about The A-Team and I remember such things as the Mr. T breakfast cereal and the Mr. T cartoon. However, raving about Mr. T is one of those things that show the seperation between my generation and the one right behind mine.

Anyway, the reason I post about this is to retell a story Val told me. She said the best thing she’s ever heard was when Mr. T was telling a story about his life and reflecting it to his faith. “So I was driving around one day, pitying fools…” Val said the casual dropping in of “pitying fools” just made her day. From what Val was telling me, as a line tossed in to generate laughter it hit its target.

I’ve decieded that I need to just start dropping that into sentences. “So I was at work, writing some Java, pitying fools, and…” And that’s is no jibber-jabber!

Geek, Politics

The First Debate

2 Comments

Sarah, Dinah, and I watched the debates tonight. Dinah managed to stay away through the whole thing instead of falling asleep like a bored kid should. 🙂 In any case…

Kerry did really well tonight. For some reason I didn’t expect him to do that well, but he was really in his element tonight. In many cases President Bush seemed to be on the defense. Way more on the defense than I expected him to be. It was really interesting and I glad we watched the whole thing. It was amazingly on focus and amazingly based in the present for how this campaign has gone so far. I would however like a count of how many times each candidate broke the rules they agreed to. Sarah and I noted many times when Bush strayed from the rules, however, I’ll admit we’re of such a mind that we’d notice that more.

People were starting to say it was over and was starting to hand everything to Bush. I admit that I was starting to lose faith. (Of course, I listen to too much talk radio especially on a station that has scared away all the non-insane-right listeners except me and a handful of others.) The debates have certainly reenergized me. While my decision has been made for a long time, I hope my fellow citizens who were undeceided are no longer.

The other thing that really struck me as intresting is what I was doing while watching the debates. I was on IRC where I hang out with many people I know. We basically had instant discussion as the debates were going on. Its really amazing what technology allows us to do. I was talking with people in California, Washington, Illinois, and Michigan. While IRC isn’t new technology, its allowed us to fact check between us and debate points as they came up.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t participate as much as I would have liked since I had to hold, feed, and put Dinah to bed. Dinah is way more important than chatting on IRC. It would have been less of a nice evening without doing that with my daughter.

One more thing, I’m watching this as I type. The Daily Show is in full effect with instant response. The best source for news with the most educated audience!

Entertainment

Rachel Barton spreading the musical love

Leave a comment

I was lucky enough to see Rachel Barton Pine last year when she was a soloist during a Dupage Symphony Orchestra. Disclosure: my wife, Sarah, plays violin in the DSO. The piece she played with the orchestra was great, but it was her encore that blew me away, as well as most of the audience who was there.

Since DSO was spending the season celebrating their 50th Anniversary Rachel’s encore was “Happy Birthday” played in about 100 different styles. Super fast, slow, a duet with herself, plucking, and many other tricks, some of which I didn’t even know a violin could do. Sarah was upset she was sitting with the orchestra being Rachel as she couldn’t see her hands as they worked the musical magick.

For the past number of years she’s been combining her talent with the violin with her love for metal and using that to expose more people to classical music.

From the article: Young violinist on quest to spread classical music

During her rehabilitation following the 1995 accident, she played her own virtuosic arrangement of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at two Chicago Bulls playoff games and at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1996.

“People started coming up to me on the streets saying, ‘Wow, I heard your national anthem and I never realized that violins were so cool,'” she said. “That really inspired me, by the fact that it’s not that people don’t like violin music but maybe that they just haven’t given it a chance, been properly exposed to it.”

So off she went to visit rock radio stations, bringing her fiddle and her vast knowledge of Megadeth and Mozart, Metallica and Mendelssohn, Robert Plant and Johann Pachelbel.

Anyway, thanks to Chicagoist who pointed out the MSNBC story to me and two of the rock cover tracks, I’ve now ordered Stringendo Storming The Citadel off Rachel’s web site. Luckily my wife doesn’t typically read my blog, so I should be able to suprise her with it.

Keith's attempts to fix the cable of life