The Battle of Skidmore Fountain

On June 22nd of 2007, 200 individuals armed with crude weapons duked it out at Skidmore Fountain in downtown Portland. You can see the gruesome results yourself.

No Puff For You

Scene: Family eating sushi. Tory is eating a cream puff with chocolate on it. No, I don't understand what a cream puff has to do with sushi or japan, but when it goes by on the conveyor belt, the girl is going to want to eat it. Especially if the thing is bigger than both her fists put together.

Joh: I am too full. I want one of those (indicates cream puff) but I am too full.

Me: We could take one home.

Joh: No, not interested. I just want one now.

Me: You could ask Tory for a little bite.

Joh: I am too full even for that.

Tory: (Chocolate coats her face and hands) I wouldn't have given you a bite anyway.

DayQuil Bloggin'

Tory: I'm not going to wear this hat.

Joh: Tory, you need to pick your final outfit so we can leave.

Me (gameshow voice): Is that your final outfit?

General laughter.

Me: "Who wants to be on time?"

I fall down laughing.

DayQuil rocks.

Mixin' It Up At The Pool

Today, Tory and I went to the pool. We hadn't been in a while, and we had a great time, but that is not what I am writing about. At the pool the Street Team from Jammin' 95.5 was spinnin' wax. Now, normally, I am not a big fan of Hip Hop, but DJ Jerm taught me something. Even Hip Hop can be made worse by a DJ who is full of himself and tries too hard. He seemed like he knew the basics of mixing (as there were no train wrecks) but he kept scratching and slamming the fader like he was doing someone a favor. Yee gads and little fishes! Someone stop him before it's too late!

Now, as I was thinking this, I also thought "Maybe I don't get it. Maybe mixing hip-hop is just that much different than mixing house." So I asked a young man who seemed to be enjoying himself and fit the radio stations demographic. "He does too much." I rest my case.

So, the sentence I hand down to DJ Jerm is this: Until such a time as it is proved that you have learned moderation and modesty you shall be forbidden from having slip-mats. Additionally, you shall be banned from any mixing board that does not have at least a 1/2 second delay on the cross fader.

WWDC 2007: Too Much Un

I would like to start off by saying that Apple has accomplished a lot this year. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of wiz-bang. Most of this years wiz-bang was introduced last year, and it being tempered this year with the implementation reality.

To begin with, the Keynote. My first impression is that it was not targeted at developers. Yeah, he talked about a lot of cool stuff. Not one thing was fresh. Nothing that did not have a session last year. Oh wait. Safari for Windows. Not many Mac developers care. None of them liked the none too subtle replacement of Firefox with Safari. If you want to replace something in your overly ambitious slide, replace IE.

They also talked about "writing applications for the iPhone". Ooooohhhhhh. I can use Web 2.0 and AJAX to write "applications" for my iPhone. I was afraid that my iPhone might not be able to surf the web. Oh wait! I know! M$ should stop writing Office for the Mac and just write an Office "application" in Web 2.0 and AJAX. That will be so much better than a native application. Hey Steve! Pull the other one. It has bells on it.

Now, the biggest thing I was looking forward to in Leopard was ZFS. Not many people were jazzed about that, but I was. I am not supposed to talk about what they said, but lets just say that the support is not anywhere near what I had hoped.

I have picked up some new stuff, and I am really looking forward to using Xcode 3.0. Leopard is way cool, and I am planning on upgrading my entire home. But this WWDC is uninspiring and unimpressive.

The Long Hiatus

Some things that have happened in my long hiatus:

• Stuart now has 8 teeth.
• Stuart now walks.
• Tory went for her first ride on a tag-along bike.
• We decided we are getting chickens.
• I ordered a MacBook Pro.
• I canceled my MacBook Pro order.

So. How are things with you?

A Close Shave

He was a filipino man, young, good looking, wearing a black tight fitting cap. As he he came at me with the straight razor, I thought, "Maybe I should not have come here."

It's remarkable, really how quickly you can go from a nice neighborhood, such as that around the Moscone, to a sketchy neighborhood. It only takes one block in the right (or wrong) direction. I walked that block in search of a haircut. When I got to the barbers, I noted that is was old. All of the tools, the chairs, the tables, they were all old. Not they waiting chairs, tho. They were relatively new folding chairs. Now, before you come to the wrong conclusion, everything was clean and well kept. When I sat in the chair, I noted that all of the reading material consisted of Penthouse and Hustler magazines. The barber was a young filipino man and very clean cut. He spoke broken english, and had a speech impediment, so getting across the haircut I wanted was not straightforward or easy.

As he cut my hair, there were a number of times when I was concerned that he did not know what I wanted. My concerns were unfounded and came from the fact that I have never had a barber who was so meticulous or precise. He cut hair on the sides and back first, going over it at least 4 times with a clipper and once with a straight razor. He looked at each part of my head from every possible angle, using the mirrors on all sides to make sure that the opposed sides looked good from up close and from farther away. All totaled he spent 30 to 45 minutes cutting my hair.

Toward the end of the cut, he asked me a question.

"Your gur brend lik tis, uh?"

I smiled and chuckled.

"Ho many gur brend you got?"

I made the jump in logic that he was asking about "girlfirends".

"I've got one wife."

"Uh. No gur brend?"

"Nope. Just the wife and two kids."

"Uh."

I will be going back there again next year.