Maeby by the Lakefrom Meet Maeby

Woof! We finally have a dog. Amy’s wanted one for as long as I’ve known her, so I knew the time would come eventually. Over the winter, settled in the house, we agreed to get one sometime this spring or summer, after Hawaii. We both did breed research, and I eventually determined I wanted a beagle (before Uno won Westminster, ahem).

Petfinder was a great resource when we actually started looking for dogs. They let you easily search through every shelter and rescue organization for the type of dog you want, and you can specify breed, age range, size, location, or any combination.

When we finally did narrow it down to a couple we liked, Happy Hound Rescue was really great. They were very helpful and responsive, and seemed genuinely interested in matching us with a dog that really fit, resulting in a happier dog and happier owners. I’m glad they did, because Maeby is perfect for us.

Jenny, as the rescue had named her, turned up in our search last week, and we both had a good feeling about her. She was mature, house trained, crate trained, and seemed sweet and quite cute. Amy set up the adoption, and she arrived on Sunday. We named her Maeby, after the Arrested Development character, because, like her namesake, she’s curious and determined and I suspect prone to find trouble if we’d let her.

Maeby is about 5 years old, a bit overweight (but not for long), and possibly a bit arthritic. Like any beagle, she can become fixated on a scent trail. She sleeps all night and loves hanging out with us on the couch. Fortunately, unlike some beagles, she doesn’t make much noise or get too excited about much… except White Castle. Amy brought some home for me the other night, and Maeby started baying and bouncing around like we’d never seen her do. She really wanted those burgers!

Bryce’s First Homer from Bryce’s Tournament

This will forever be one of my favorite shots, and I’ll never forget it. We arrived late to watch our nephew Bryce’s first game of a local tournament. A few minutes later, I noticed he was on deck. I decided to warm up my camera with a couple of shots. I was in position just as he stepped up to the plate. He took a big swing at the first pitch, and I took a single shot of that.

I looked up to see where the ball was going, and noticed it was going pretty far. Back, back, back… just over the fence…

Bryce’s First Home Run!

It was so cool! Later on, with two outs and down 3-2 in the final inning, Bryce demonstrated great skill in another play by stealing home and clearly beating the tag to tie the game. Unfortunately the fix was in, as the so-called umpire made a terrible call, ending the game.

We know the truth, Bryce! Congrats on an awesome game!

Adriaan Sleeps from Adriaan James

I’ve been a terrible blogger lately, and today I noticed that I never posted congratulations to our friends Em & Dylan on the arrival of the newest bear, Adriaan James. Amy and I rushed over to see him the moment we returned from Hawaii, and he’s beautiful. Congrats dudes!

I haven’t blogged in quite a while, and people keep asking to see my Hawaii pics. I still have to sift through those, but here’s a taste of some of the fun we had:

A coworker recommended I watch this video for the “Neti Pot,” a decidedly modern health maintenance device. Maybe it shouldn’t, but it cracks me up.

Twanny Flexes from GLBT 2008

Finally got back on my snowboard for the first time in two years. Failing a real trip our west, Anthony and I spent last weekend tearing up Lutsen. I have low expectations of “the mountain” after my previous adventures there. I’ve been there at least three other times, during which I experienced mind-numbing cold (highs of -20), incredible warmth (for December – lows in the 40s), and pea-soup-thick fog (couldn’t see 30 feet in front of you).

As a result, I’ve never been able to experience what Lutsen has to offer. This trip was totally different. The snow was decent (although far from wonderful), and the weather was amazing. Not a cloud in the sky, no fog, no wind, and perfect temperatures – always between 12 and 15.

So it was nice to learn that one can actually have a good ride. There are lots of decent runs, and they’re just long enough to make it worth it. The lifts are slow, but the lift lines are quite short (especially if you can ride on a weekday). We were pleasantly sore after each day. Unfortunately, it felt like a good warm up for a trip to the Wasatch or Rockies, and it really made me miss snowboarding. The day after our trip I was just sad without it.

Incidentally, if you’re ever in Lutsen or near Grand Marais, I highly recommend dining at the Birch Terrace Supper Club. Delicious!

Carmen send me this incredibly weird, somewhat funny video/music tribute to my old home town. I’m still not sure what to think.

Wow, no posts in a month. What a terrible blogger I am. I think I’m justified this time. Frankly, January completely sucked. Hear now my saga.

On the Friday before New Year’s Eve, I woke with a terrible toothache. Despite it being her “busiest day of the year,” my dentist was nice enough squeeze me in. She determined that I needed a root canal. Yay! Unfortunately, she only had time to perform half a root canal – enough to alleviate my pain until the week after next when her schedule was more open.

That seemed to go fine until a couple of hours later – when the root canal got infected. I can’t describe how painful this was other than to say it felt like a kindey stone in my mouth (I’ve had kidney stones several times – it doesn’t get much worse). I called her emergency line, got her directly, and before too long I had some penicillin and was good as new.

Or was I? The Monday after I finished that course of antibiotics, I started to itch. I noticed two mosquito-bite sized bumps on my arm, and I couldn’t stop scratching them. By lunch time, there were three bumps. An hour or so later, there were eight. Hives! I realized that something was seriously wrong with me and went straight to the doctor. She determined that I was probably allergic to the penicillin. She told me to take Benedryll and gave me a perscription for a mild steroid in case they got worse.

I went home and rested, feeling comforted in my nice Benedryll haze, but by bedtime the hives were way, way worse. Imagine a five inch raised, red bump on your thigh that itches like nothing else. I had those in at least five or six spots on my body. Taking the steroid seemed to make them mostly go away by the next morning, and by Wednesday I could barely tell they had been there at all.

Feeling energized by that, I decided to finish the painting that Amy and I had started the weekend prior. I didn’t mind the work, and I sure liked the results: transforming the hideous aquarium-themed nursery into a nice, relaxing home office. I was painting without a mask, and with the doors and windows shut no less. It’s great how they’ve paint not smell bad anymore! Must be fine for you…

Or so I thought. The next morning, the hives were back worse than ever. Itching like crazy! Doc gave me a stronger steroid, and I had to take that and Benedryll for the next two weeks, leaving me in a terrible haze of dizziness, headache, and nausea – all mixed together with a strangely huge appetite. You’d think that’d be the end of it, but the hits just kept on coming. And this just raised a mystery: was I allergic to the penicillin or the paint?

Returning to the dentist to finish my root canal, I figured I might as well get my long-overdue schedule cleaning. In that process, they found two more deep cavities that “might also have to become root canals.” Great. Both had formed behind old fillings (like the first), so there was little I could have done about them. That evening, one of said fillings broke off, leaving a big scratchy hole in one side of my mouth to go along with the scratchy temporary crown on the other. Having the cavities filled in the end was actually more miserable than the root canal in the first place.

All that and I lost $65 at my first poker game of the year. I think I’m back to normal now, and I’m incredibly grateful for Amy’s wonderful care. On the bright side, I have a great excuse to never paint again.

With my fantasy football winnings (regular season champion, yo!), I picked up Rock Band for the Xbox 360. What a great purchase that’s turned out to be. Over the holidays, we put bands together a few time, and it’s always a blast.

My favorite moment came when Amy, singing Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive,” belted out, “I’m a cowboy… on a seahorse I ride….” She’s getting new glasses soon.

With singing, drumming, guitar and bass, everyone can have fun with Rock Band. Check this video out from Conan O’Brien. Halfway through he does the Beastie Boys as Edith Bunker. It’s priceless!

Here you go, “Baba.” While investigating used guitars on Craigslist for a coworker, I found this priceless listing:

I have an Oscar Schmidt 6-string acoustic guitar, Model# OG-2N. It is like new and in great condition. It was a gift from an ex, he was supposed to teach me how to play, but like every other part of our relationship, he was lazy. Also included is a molded SKB case, (price tag on it says $104.95), KORG chromatic tuner, and a lovely maroon-flowered strap. I am told that this is a great guitar for beginners, but honestly I really know nothing about it. I did a little ebay research and similar guitars are listed at this price…seems fair to me.

I can not provide you with a picture because I threw the camera at him during a fight. Maybe with your money I will buy a new one.

Please get this thing out of my house. Makes a great gift for the right girl, just not me, I wanted to learn the banjo.

Cash only please.

Cash only indeed.

After watching the fantastic An Inconvenient Truth over the weekend, it’s great to read news like this. I feel much safer knowing that the world’s scientists are leaving no stone unturned or animal’s anus unexplored in the search for global warming solutions.

Today, we celebrate one year of wedded bliss. I love you, Sugarpop!

And I’m already done moving my blog. That was easy.

I’m moving TCOB to Dreamhost after experimenting with GoDaddy for several months. GoDaddy was fine, but it didn’t allow for as much technical experimentation. Furthermore, several of their processes seemed convoluted. I’m looking forward to trying out Subversion on Dreamhost as well. I’ll post again to this blog when everything seems moved.

Today’s post on Scott Adams’s blog is hilarious. It refers to this article in The Telegraph about a man caught and prosecuted for fornicating with a bicycle.

Yeah, that’s right.

What kills me about the article is the photo of the culprit. You’d expect a mug shot or a frantic paparazzi capture of a shamed man hiding from the press, right? Wrong. It almost looks like he hired a publicist and scheduled a photo shoot. He’s not hiding anything. I’m looking forward to showing my support for him at the one-man Bike Pride parade, certainly just around the corner.

Being such a big fan of his bands Superchunk and Portastatic, it’s great to see Mac McCaughan telling the man what’s up about important issues like non-commercial radio and net neutrality. Tell it like it is, Mac!

The latest “discovery” in my continuing search for MP3s I can pay for is eMusic. While I really like it, eMusic is sort of a mixed bag in the online music world – half subscription service, half store, providing a strange experience at first.

Most subscription services give you unlimited access to a large library of DRM-ed tracks which all expire when you close your account. eMusic, on the other hand, is a subscription service that lets you download a limited number of non-DRM, totally standard MP3 files that are yours to keep even after the your subscription ends. You pick a service level, like $10/month for 20 songs or $25/month for 100 songs. That’s about $0.25 song – pretty amazing considering that other services tend to charge around $1.00 per song.

eMusic’s catalog tends toward the indie, which while great for me might not suit everyone (I’ve certainly found tons of music I like.). The quality also might not please audiophiles – VBR targeting an average of 192k. My only gripe is this: if I have 9 songs left on my account and I grab a whole album of 10 songs, I’d like to be able to complete the album at my currently monthly song rate of $0.25. It’d be great if the library were more vast, but that will come with time.

All in all, I love eMusic, and I’m sure I’ll be a long-term subscriber. I love buying music, I love doing it cheaply, I love generating no plastic waste or needless shipping, and I love getting standard files that will play forever.

Moreover, and my real reason for writing: if you think you might like it too, let me know. If I refer you and you join for at least a month, we’ll each get 50 free songs! That’s like four free albums. What more could you ask for? :D

I’ve said it before, but bottled water is evil. Kari sent me this link to the Carbon Concious Consumer, an organization working to reduce the usage of bottled water. Click on it and sign up!

Whether you’re a fan or not, go and buy or download the new Radiohead album immediately. Why? Because doing so will help decide the future of how you get your music. Do you want to continue to pay needlessly inflated prices to unnecessary corporations? Do you want to collect more useless plastic boxes? Do you want to marry one company’s devices via their locked-down file format?

Or would you rather pay a reasonable price directly to the artist for a simple, open file that you’ll be able to play on any device, forever? That’s exactly what Radiohead is offering. The album they released today, In Rainbows, is offered directly from their website as a zip file of standard MP3s. The price is definitely reasonable… whatever you decide to pay. Pay nothing, pay $1000, pay anything in between. I “voted” with about $7, because I know that’s way more than they’d by selling me a CD through a label, and it’s way less than I’d pay in the same situation. You can also pay nothing and try the album out. If you like it, pay later. Or don’t.

As far as the music itself is concerned, I’m far from disappointed. I’m a fair-weather Radiohead fan. While The Bends and OK Computer are among my favorite albums and belong in some epic rock hall of fame, the rest of their library varies from really good (Pablo Honey) to intolerable (Amnesiac). This is largely a result from their tendency to vary style and experiment. Each albums tends to have its sound, from poppy rock to noisy techno art school nonsense. In Rainbows is a nice blend of all those soundscapes, and it’s already my third favorite album of theirs after one listen. They had certainly earned my £3.48 by about track 4.

I hope Radiohead’s experiment is hugely successful. The big labels have ignored consumer demands for way too long, and their preference for litigation and prosecution over innovation is disturbing. They’ve had plenty of opportunity to lead the way with non-DRM music. If In Rainbows is successful, they’ll be forced to change their ways or ride them in to the ground.

The new MP3 store from Amazon delivers a perfect modern music retail experience, at least as I’ve imagined it over the years. I like buying my music, but I don’t want more CDs – chunks of plastic that do nothing but sit on a shelf. I like iTunes, but I don’t want DRM, and I don’t want to be limited to one device. Buying MP3s is the perfect solution, and Amazon provides a fantastic user experience to boot.

You first install a small application on your machine. Then you simply browse the extensive online library. Songs are reasonably priced, usually lower than $0.99. Better yet, full albums are usually priced from $7.99 – $9.99. When you find what you like and click to buy it, the Amazon Downloader automatically puts it in your designated music folder, nicely organized, and adds it to iTunes or Windows Media Player if you like.

While they don’t yet have the selection that iTunes offers, at 2.3 million songs and climbing they have tons. The files are high quality (~256Kbps, VBR), standard MP3s. I bought several albums there this weekend, and the whole experience has been incredibly pleasing. I love knowing that the music I paid for will be easily playable on whatever device I happen to have in the future, and I love that iTunes finally has a powerful competitor.

In the past week, I have found four half-empty (or half-full if you like) containers of Coca Cola near the end of our driveway, one 20-oz bottle Vanilla and 3 12-oz cans of Classic. Coke is among my favorite beverages, and as such I’m left to wonder why they aren’t finishing them? And then, why are they leaving them neatly standing on my property?

This week’s edition of Basic Instructions is hilarious.