Tonight, the 12th Mr. Risk tournament will take place. I was a little disappointed at the "trash talking" this week, but there were a few good shots from the defending Mr. Risk: Hey guys. I was telling someone recently about our RISK game and the MR.RISK title. After I explained the history, this person had a real good laugh and said to me, "Wow! Those guys sound awful! Do they even know how to play the game?!! Maybe you should sit down with them and the rulebook so they understand the game and can pose a greater challenge to you?" I told him/her that Rajan had the original rulebook and besides you guys are very ...
There's a new version of iTunes available today (v4.5). Not a drastic upgrade, but they did add some new features: # iMix Post and email songs in your playlists for everyone to see. # Party Shuffle Something about playlists. I'm not sure what exactly it is yet. # Quick Links Your library tunes now have a link to the Music Store. Click on the arrow icon to see other songs on that album or by that artist. # Convert WMA to AAC For those of you who didn't know any better, and started ripping CDs into WMA format - you can now convert them over to AAC ...
About 11 months ago, I made a decision that I consider to be the defining moment of my life - to purchase a pair of Minnetonka Moccasins. Since that day, my feet have more often than not been surrounded by this pair of size 10 moose-skin moccasins. When I first put on the moccasins, it was an unfamiliar feeling. The best I can describe it is to imagine yourself having a carpet of the softest, plushest material you can think of, and it continuously unrolls itself in front of you as you walk... Or perhaps imagine that you are a Pharaoh in Egypt or a Caesar in Rome, and your handmaidens toss rose ...
Dear Milwaukee Bucks, I was one of the 18,717 people in attendance for game 3 of the playoff series against the Detroit Pistons on Saturday, April 26. I was also one of the estimated 9,000 people who chose to stay in their seats during the halftime intermission. To get straight to my point, I place the blame for the opening events of the second half of that game squarely on the shoulders of the Energee Dance Team. The halftime show was pathetic. Was this not an NBA game? This goes beyond my personally feeling embarassed that my team would approve such a pitiful form of entertainment - "Energee" completely sucked the ...
I did a search on ESPN this morning, and on the results page, there was a sidebar that listed popular search terms. One of the top 3 was "espn toolbar". Looks like it's currently in Beta, but I installed it anyways. I'm going to play around with it for a few days and see what I think about it - it might be easier than going to the site every few hours.
This Sunday, Judy will be participating in the annual MS Walk. She's doing the 7.5 mile course, starting at 8:30 in the freakin' morning. I have graciously volunteered to either drop off or pick her up. I think this is the first year (or the first I've know about it) that you can make a pledge online: MS Walk Secure Online Pledge Form (enter "Bostetter, Judy Ms" in the "Participant" field)
In what will most likely be my final semi-major purchase before home buying season opens, I picked up a new monitor on eBay last week. Err... that is I ordered it last week, and it finally got here today - more on that in a bit. It's a Sony 17" Widescreen - all kinds of real estate. Maximum resolution is 1280x768. I've still got to fidget with the color balance a little, but my initial impressions are good. It's got a number of inputs available in the back - I'm using a standard VGA for the PC, but I could also opt for S-video or HiDef component video. Getting it running in XP was no problem - it really is plug and play! - but I've got some work to do to get it running under Linux. I'm able to switch from widescreen to standard, but I'm not sure how to set the resolution to what I need it to be. Now, on to the story...
ESPN posted a feature last night that ranks the top 10 athletic feats. You can read the whole list for yourself, but #1 was Bob Beamon shattering the world record in the long jump at the '68 Olympics. I won't disagree with that, but a few of the others that made the list are "iffy". Mike Vick breaking a long run to win a game in overtime? Sure, it was a great play, probably the best that year. But in the top 10 of all-time? No way. The biggest oversight I saw was Michael Johnson. At the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, not only did he become the first person to win both the 200m and 400m, he completely destroyed the ...
Wow, is that cool. I just saw a posting at another site about Yahoo! adding WiFi Hot Spots to their maps. Just click the little "Centrino" icon (blech), and the access points are added to the maps. Roll over each icon to see the name and address of the location. Not quite as useful when you back out to a higher view. I've actually never used Yahoo's map functions before - I think I like it better than MapQuest.
I was poking around this morning looking for a way to do a calendar display within MovableType with an offset - allowing users to move forward and backward through months. One of the first results I found on Google was a full-screen calendar output template. It took me about 20 minutes to drop it inside of my own site template, and another half hour to update the style sheets, but it's done. I've still got to work on the main Archives page, but everything is coming together...
I was doing my morning reading yesterday, and came across yet another search engine - a9, a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.com. It's a simple little search engine - Google-esque to a point, but adds some of Amazon's new search-inside-the-book functionality, as well as a saved-searches function. And, like so many others, they offer an IE-browser toolbar for you to download! That got me thinking about how many of these toolbars I could cram into IE at once. As of now, I'm up to 9 -- Google, Yahoo, A9, AltaVista, Vivisimo, eBay, MSN, Alexa, and Ask Jeeves. I know there are plenty more out ...
The Grand Finale of The Apprentice airs tonight! I'm no fan at all of "reality tv", but I do enjoy watching The Donald fire these dummies. It's down to the last 2, and everyone has a favorite. I just don't like that Bill character. He's slimey. Reminds me of all those guys in college I used to hate. Jackass. Also, in some of the interview clips I've seen of him, he keeps referring to "the game". Trump made a point at the end of the last episode that this was not a game, but a 14 week interview. So, my theory is that he doesn't like Bill on that point. It's not that I ...
The Chuck just informed me that tonight's regularly scheduled episode of 24 will be pre-empted by the Presidential Address... and it's being moved to 8:00 PM Sunday night - opposite Alias (and the Sopranos). Shit! I might have to run out and buy a Tivo this week. 24 started out slowly this year, but has been picking up steam. Keifer has been quoted as saying that the final 9 episodes of this season are the best the show has ever produced. Meanwhile, Alias is *finally* putting an end to the Lauren's double-agent schtick - and David Carradine is back this week... These are the only 2 shows that I'll bother rearranging my schedule around. I'm not sure what to do here... Of course, the capper is that, not only will 24 not be on tonight, the only thing on tonight will be W. - probably damage control after the last few days worth of testimony and findings from the 9/11 commission. Speaking of W., has anyone seen the ridiculous commercial he's running? Old (40s?) black & white footage, with a voice-over harping on Kerry's "gas-tax" hike? Is that all he has to run on? Taxes - that's what you've got? Taxes is probably issue #53 on my list right now.
(Happy Kuchina, everyone!)Yesterday was what is known as "High Kuchina", which is the rare occasion of Easter Sunday and the Kuchina Feast falling on the same day. Coincidentally, the final round of the Masters tournament also happened to take place on the same day. The Chuck (mostly Polish) and I had a wonderful feast with my Mom (mostly Polish), Grandmother (all Polish), Dad (not Polish), and my brother Barry (mostly Polish). I'll post a little more about the history of Kuchina later, but today I would like to share with you the story of "the sausage guy". There's a little old man on the sout' side of Milwaukee (exact ...
I've just finished up adding a few new features to the site. First is a style switcher, something I've seen on other sites. There's a great article over at A List Apart detailing how to get it done - the implementation is incredibly simple. The hard part is in the details - coming up with different style sheets. There are many methods that can be used to get it done, but this one uses a cookie to store a user's choice of style. For visitors that have cookies disabled, the default style is applied. For now, I have two finished styles available - blue and grey. You can choose between them by clicking on the icons in the ...
From today's JS Online: "Opening act remains big deal in these parts" "People ask whether Milwaukee is a baseball town, and the answer is, it sure wants to be. Today is more proof of that." Wrong. It shows that Milwaukeans will use any excuse to take a day off and drink themselves silly. It's become acceptable for people to take the day off from work to spend opening day down at "the old ballpark". They're not fooling anyone - they're going to get drunk. Sure, there's a number of people who are genuine baseball fans. But is Milwaukee a "baseball town"? Nope. Milwaukee's a "frontrunner" town when it comes to sports - if ...
It wasn't a christmas gift, it wasn't a new-year's resolution, but Judy & I signed up for a Bally's membership in January of this year. Technically, Judy signed up, and I go for free. Nice deal, hey? My only request -- and it was a deal-breaker -- was that there had to be a pool. The first time I went was early on a Saturday morning. I swam for about 40 minutes, and it was my first real exercise in quite a while. When I got into my car when I was done, I quickly realized that I was in no condition to be driving around. Luckily, Judy lives within 3 blocks of the ...
Last night was Election Night in Milwaukee. One of the closest mayoral races I've seen in town. Of couse, I've been here 30+ years, and there have only been 2 elected mayors in that time - Henry Maier and John Norquist. I can only assume they were out there all day, but around 7:30PM last night, all 5 corners of Brady & Farwell were manned by opposing campaign volunteers holding placards (Barrett 3, Pratt 2). The media blitz by both Barrett and Pratt had been just outrageous. Nothing terribly nasty, but just a deluge of ads over the last few weeks. And, from Mr. Barrett, a deluge of phone calls. I've received at ...
I've just added a new feature to the site. In the sidebar to the right, there are now updated news feeds from various sites. I was toying aroud with writing something to grab, parse, and display RSS feeds from other sites, but I found a nice little tool called zFeeder. It took me about 45 minutes to download, install, figure it out, and customize it to fit the layout. It's a pretty slick tool, once you figure it out. I'm pulling in feeds from Slate, Fool, and Slashdot right now. I've got to work on a script that will auto-update the feeds every so often, but all in all, it's a nice little addition.
Some lively conversation over (many) drinks at the Trocadero last night with a few of the fellas - politics, giant spiders, el Chupacabra, and real estate were some of the keynote topics. Things got a little heated at one point, but I think everyone is going to be OK. Later on, we popped upstairs to the Red Light. Conversation turned to music, specifically, Andy's bizarre preoccupation with Bob Dylan. Apparently, he's listened exclusively to Dylan for the last few months -- nothing else. I'm not a fan, but I respect other people's tastes. Then he bad-mouthed the Beach Boys. I think he was quoting a Rolling Stone article that ranked the top 500 albums, and the fact that Dylan had ...