Very sad

I just found out that the young daughter of a good friend and coworker of mine passed away on Monday. She was less than 2 years old, and had a terminal genetic disease. I had the privilege of meeting her twice including the weekend before last, and she was a wonderful little girl.

Please think of him and his family in your prayers.

NH

Another from the file of "how much fear and vagueness can we use to make you think marriage equality will be the end of the world"



and Keith Olbermann's comments:

Memorial Day

A quick reminder to everyone to remember the reason for Memorial Day, and if you have a chance to honor or thank someone who has served our country please do. I know many people in my family (both grandpas) and many friends who have served in the military.

A fun weekend - Friday evening grilling and festivities with friends, Saturday was a nice relaxing day with not a lot on the agenda (got to have dinner with friend Caryn). The weather on Sunday was just beautiful - the days you live in Minnesota for. Erin had some things to do in the morning so I got a lot of little odds and ends done, and enlisted friend Wayne and his pickup to go to Sargents and buy some trees. I think everyone was at Sargents :)

After the trees (and of course buying DQ for Wayne to thank him for the pickup - ok an excuse to eat ice cream!) Erin came home and made some of his famous chicken and dumplings for a friend who has a bad cold, and then we went sat outside at friends Jay & Eric's house and enjoyed the evening. As it got dark, Eric, Erin, and I headed to Cinemagic to catch the late showing of "Terminator Salvation". This is probably the movie I expected "Termiantor 3" to be, and the one I've been waiting for since I was blown away by "Terminator 2" way back in 1991. While there were a few things that were kind of annoying, overall I thought it was a good movie.

Another beautiful day today, planting trees and doing yard odds and ends.

Funky Cold Grammar

Two completely unrelated posts...for those of us who remember Tone Loc. (Wild Thing and Funky Cold Medina are basically the same song)

http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=102309876296&h=4XI0V&u=bfcwe&ref=nf

and an awesome discovery I made this morning, after hearing some of what I call "English-isms", things in the English language that are commonly spoken or used incorrectly.

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html#errors

DADT again

I know that the president and the administration are busy fixing...well everything. But this policy is really sad and is hurting our country and our national security. There are countless examples of other countries' military organizations who allow gays and lesbians to openly serve in the military and it works just fine. There are countless military leaders who say this policy should be done away with. And many of the people being discharged say their direct commanders and their units all know they're gay or lesbian and don't care and don't want them to have to leave, because, just like everyone else in the military, these soldiers are professionals and are expected to follow a code of conduct and do their job. Period. If there was really a problem, having men and women in the military would have been a problem too, and obviously that works just fine. This is all political now. I hope every single LGBT person in the military comes out, because then the military and the administration will have no choice but to deal with it.

Gardening Update

We'll finally be putting in the seedlings TODAY! We got the rest of our "supplies" yesterday (including a bunch of bricks) and Erin worked hard all day on putting them in (and I helped when I got home).


And a cute kitty picture for fun!

Muppet Babies

My sister sent me a message last night saying that my niece is good at memorizing things like songs or whole TV shows - and that she memorized an entire episode of the "Muppet Babies". This brought up two emotions - 1) I am so proud of her for being able to memorize random stuff like her uncle (don't ever watch Star Wars with me, because I'll sit there and say the lines) and 2) I miss the "Muppet Babies" - they aren't even on epguides.com (although they are in IMDB) so I don't even know how many seasons it went. Of all the Saturday morning cartoons I watched growing up, that might have been the most fun - they just played and pretended and had fun all day. All kids should do that!

Watching/Reading

Sadly, on the reading front, I've been reading two business case articles for a class I'm taking this week on "Business Acumen" - I'm not really much into the business side of things, but my manager recommended this class to everyone who is non-business, and best of all it's free.

Over the weekend, Erin and I went to the premiere of Angels & Demons - while they didn't follow the book it was still good. After a beautiful evening bike ride on Sunday, we watched a random movie on Comedy Central (now in HD), Let's Go to Prison, which, ok was a "B" movie but was just dumb humor and good for post-exercise.

Also, they are acutally starting to work on 50th Ave again, let's hope it gets done by THIS September, given that their target date was LAST September.

"Star Treks" review

Not particularly useful, but funny nonetheless

http://www.bigempire.com/filthy/startreks.html

Landscaping

We (mostly Erin) have finished building the fence and are now awaiting a delivery of some brick, dirt, and pebbles from Home Depot on Tuesday. The fence looks great - it is 5 feet tall, which, given the whole size of the garden, will keep deer out.

For awhile we kept feeling like we were behind or not getting enough done with the garden, landscaping, etc. I think I've come to the realization that getting things done a little bit at a time is ok - today we looked at trees and will probably wait another week or two to think about what we really want and put them in. And, given that it hasn't really gotten warm yet, not being outside all day isn't so bad :)

The tree plan so far is to have an apple and a pear tree next to the garden, a magnolia tree (smaller) in the corner of the garden, and a weeping willow in the opposite corner of the yard, along with a replacement cottonwood for the one that never really took off.

Also accomplished this weekend - the California trip in July (friend John getting married in San Diego) all finalized - besides 3 days in San Diego, we get 3+ days in San Francisco, staying at a hotel on Fisherman's Wharf, taking an evening tour of Alcatraz, and a full day winery/wine tasting tour around Sonoma. We will hit some sites in San Francisco - Gharidelli Square, Golden Gate Park, the Castro District. Anyone else who's been there and has suggestions, please send them my way!

Streams Computing

For anyone curious, the project I've been working on for the past 3 years was officially announced for release yesterday.

Official Press Release: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/27508.wss

Additional Press:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=17849 (this one has a pretty picture)
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=17923

I wouldn't expect anyone to really read all of that unless they are just that interested in all the gory technical details - but this is pretty exciting for me since, in 12 years at IBM, I haven't actually been a part of project that has been released as a product. It's fun to see this actually become something that customers will actually use.

DADT

A good interview with yet another very qualified person being kicked out of the military simply because of DADT:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

More Star Trekkin'

Admittedly I've been reading a lot about what everybody's saying about the new Star Trek movie - proving once again my theory on life that "all press is good press". I found these articles kind of interesting.

http://denofgeek.com/movies/248899/star_trek_is_a_725m_opening_weekend_enough.html
(several links on the bottom of that page too)

http://denofgeek.com/movies/248869/8_problems_i_have_with_jj_abrams_star_trek.html

In discussion with friend Trevor, I guess there are a few things they can do which don't totally invalidate most of the previous Star Trek canon, but they probably won't do them. I'm still pretty convinced they're rebooting, resetting, and going to take it in the mainstream Hollywood direction that makes money. I guess I'll just enjoy the many years of great Star Trek we had and hope that they do something good with this new set of movies, whatever that may be.

Where no Star Trek has gone before...

Friday night was a busy one - as I was getting home from work, it was just starting to rain, and looked like we were in for a night of rain. Friend Anne called around 7 saying she had a flat tire up near where we live, so we told her to call AAA and we'd come down and make sure she was ok. They ended up coming quickly and put on the spare, but we hung out with her and Lukas until they were done.

It was raining very steady by then, but not yet storming or windy, so we headed down to see if my softball game was still on, and when we got there, indeed it was - everything was pretty wet but it wasn't windy or cold and no lightening, so game on. We ended up losing after 5 innings by 10 or 11 runs, but we were playing last year's championship team and they were good sports and everyone was making the most of the wet weather so all in all, a fun game.

Afterwards, the plan was to meet some friends at the Wehrenberg theaters down on the south side to see the late showing of the new "Star Trek" movie on the big digital screen. I won't spoil anything for anyone, but I do have to comment. Anyone who is not a big follower of Star Trek or has never seen any of the other movies before, and/or if you're not even a sci-fi fan, you'll probably love this movie, because it's the mainstream type of action that movies and TV shows have been doing lately. I, however, have followed Star Trek for years and am a huge fan of the Star Trek universe and science fiction, and I was fairly unhappy with the movie. Besides the characters that they used, it really didn't fit in with the rest of the Star Trek universe. So...take that for what it's worth. (this post on The Joy of Tech is a funny reference to what they're doing)

Saturday we headed to Roseville to celebrate several Bye family events - 3 college graduations, an engagement, 3 birthdays, and a 25th wedding anniversary! It was a fun afternoon, including learning the game "Koob", a Norwegian cross between horse shoes, croquet, and probably a few other games. The parties didn't stop then though, as when we got back to Rochester another friend was having a college graduation party, so we headed over for another few hours of great food and conversation. By the time we got home, it was time to go to bed!

Progress on the fence...

Adventures in Fence Building

Admittedly, I haven't really been doing any of the work - Erin has been taking advantage of the weather and working hard every day when it doesn't rain! But this evening I got to contribute - we had 4 extra line posts and had gotten the wrong size top rails, so some returning and exchanging to Menards needed to happen. In the good old days of having my pickup, these sorts of things were no problem, and my Vue handles most house project supplies, but these are 8' and 10'6" long metal posts, and the Vue just isn't big enough to handle that (and you can't open the tailgate window, so can't even stick things out the back easily). When we realized there were just too many supplies to carry in the Vue, Erin called Menards and asked what their delivery charge was..$65 minimum. But they said they also rent a contractor pickup for 75 minutes for $30. So the first time around Erin did that and got the majority of our supplies.

Tonight...friend Wayne to the rescue! Wayne still has his full-size Chevy and saved me $30 and an extra round trip to Menards! So I got him ice cream at DQ...seems like I got the better end of that deal!

A picture of the progress (and a goofy picture of Madame Sparkles just for fun)...the rain has slowed the work down but still getting a lot done!

And a little not as fun news...

I guess I should look at this as a positive that it passed the house, but it still amazes me how many of our representative (mostly on party lines) vote AGAINST something like this:

http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid81742.asp

I get the argument people make about hate crimes laws, and that we should just enforce the laws we have - and if laws were enforced uniformly and penalties were not subjective, there wouldn't be as much need for these. But that's not the reality. And we DO punish criminals differently based on motive - first degree murder is more serious than second degree murder for example. So, why WOULDN'T you have a law that punishes one person more severely for committing a wrongdoing against another person simply because they hate them?

The Newspaper Industry

An interesting article on slashdot about the future of newspapers, the same theme I've heard and read about in other articles:

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/04/1414243&from=rss

I would probably read the "newspaper" a lot more if it weren't for the physical medium - carrying around an Amazon Kindle would make it much easier to read and take with you.

Unrelated - it is a beautiful day again today - dad was visiting this weekend and yesterday we drove down to the Mississippi river and went up the Wisconsin side and had lunch at a nice little restaurant in Alma and walked around for awhile. We stopped at an art gallery where there were bunches of animal and cat portraits - now I want to have portraits done for our cats :)

Softball "Heroics"

OK I know "heroics" would be hitting the home run to win the game or something like that...but as a catcher you take what you get, because you usually don't get many important plays. In our opening game last night, I got two, and lost a lot of knee skin in the process!

Third inning, the bases were loaded and the ball was hit right to the pitcher, so an awkward play to start with because I'm reaching across my body to catch anything from that direction, and I actually dropped it but managed to pick it back up in time to make the out and stop the run from scoring.

Sixth and final inning since we were past an hour, we started their at-bat up 16-8, and they got on a run and scored 6 runs, with their best hitter up (he had hit a home run the first time). He hit one deep to the outfield, and was intent on rounding the bases. The outfielder managed to get it to the short stop, who made a really good throw to home, and I caught it in front of the plate. The guy dodged me and we both fell down, and as we were both on the ground I managed to tag him before he touched home. We won 16-14. I scraped up my knee. I thought it was a fair trade :)

The best part was that Erin and dad (here visiting for the weekend) were there to see it. Nurse Erin got me all fixed up with antibiotic ointment and a big bandage when we got home, and after dinner and a glass of wine at Timberlodge, the pain was forgotten.