Happy Halloween

Brought to you by Tom Hanks and Stephen Colbert.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Stephen Ghoulbert's Spooky-Time Halloween Fun Guide - Tom Hanks
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Life is a Marathon

The magic of marathon day, support when you need it the most.



Everyone should experience a cheering crowd.

Quote of the day

Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably.
The lesson is, never try.

~ Homer Simpson

Comments?

Nothing angers the internet like terrible spelling. 

Disclosure - I am a terrible speller. If it weren't for the red squiggly line that appears below my misspellings, my posts would be tough(er) to read. But maybe they would be more widely read...

click each to enlarge

Quote of the day

If you die in an elevator, be sure to push the Up button.

~ Sam Levenson

Don't let it happen

Best of

Best T-shirt I saw along the course. Puts "Just Do It" to shame.

Best sign along the course:

Budget problem solved

Messing with a classic, part I

This is my favorite scene from one of my favorite movies. The fact that someone would mess with it should piss me off, but this is pretty good.

The Chatty Duelists

That reminds me of a joke

"So I am at the Goose, and a duck walks in..."

Sounds like the start of a joke, but it actually happened. There is a pub in Bellevue called the Goose, and we went there a few times after work for a beer and a game of darts. One night, a duck walks in the front door and wandered around for about five minutes before heading back outside. This was years ago, and if it had happened today everyone would have whipped out their phones to capture it on video.

So today, I am at the Upstart Crow and a pigeon walks in.

The Upstart Crow is this great bookstore/coffee shop in the Seaport Village area of San Diego. I was there with a cup of coffee finishing the first draft of my novel when a pigeon walked in. It was not there long enough to pose for a picture, but I have a feeling that this is not all that unusual. While I was sitting there, several smaller birds (finches?) flew in looking for crumbs. They also did not sit still for long, but they looked like they were plenty comfortable being inside.

At the place I had lunch earlier, there was a sign on the deck asking people not to feed the birds. I guess there needs to be signs on the tables inside as well. Not that the Upstart Crow needs to get any cooler, but having birds perched on chairs and bookshelves does give it that extra little something.

I am my own grandpa

I have this mental block when it comes to the way people are related to each other. I can do math in my head, but after you get past the first branch of the family tree, my eyes glaze over. My brother has it down in his head, and he had tried to explain how we are related to certain people, but without a flowchart I am lost.

One of his lessons stuck though, because I was able to distinguish that Annabelle and Holly's visiting cousin were cousins-once-removed, but quite frankly I couldn't explain to them what a second cousin was. (It has something to do with branching off higher up in the tree.  I think).

Matt started singing "I am my own grandpa", a song that everyone had heard but me. I looked it up on Youtube and found this video, with an included flowchart. It still gives me a headache.



The lyrics may help you follow along, but maybe not: 


Many, many years ago when I was twenty-three
I was married to a widow who was pretty as could be
This widow had a grownup daughter who had hair of red
My father fell in love with her, and soon they too were wed

This made my Dad my son-in-law and really changed my life
For now my daughter was my mother, 'cause she was my father's wife
And to complicate the matter, even though it brought me joy,
I soon became the father of a bouncing baby boy

My little baby then became a brother-in-law to Dad
And so became my uncle, though it made me very sad
For if he were my uncle, then that also made him brother
Of the widow's grownup daughter, who was of course my stepmother

Father's wife then had a son who kept them on the run
And he became my grandchild, for he was my daughter's son
My wife is now my mother's mother, and it makes me blue
Because although she is my wife, she's my grandmother too

Now if my wife is my grandmother, then I'm her grandchild
And every time I think of it, it nearly drives me wild
'Cause now I have become the strangest case you ever saw
As husband of my grandmother, I am my own grandpa

I'm my own grandpa,
I'm my own grandpa,
It sounds funny, I know
But it really is so
I'm my own grandpa

Quote of the day

Before we work on artificial intelligence, why don't we do something about natural stupidity?

~ Steve Polyak

Shadow puppet

Sorry, wrong number

click to enlarge

Several years ago, J and I lived with another couple in a rented house. The guy was one of my best friends and we worked together building decks. His girlfriend was another friend of mine who I worked with at my second job. We were all intertwined in some fashion, and the house was jokingly called the 'commune'.

It turns out, our phone number was one digit off from a movie theater, so we received plenty of 'wrong number' calls. After a while, we changed the outgoing message on the answering machine to "If you are trying to reach (our four names), please leave a message. If you are trying to reach the movie theater, please learn to dial". Most everyone just hung up when they realized their mistake, but one guy left the stumbling message "uh, um, you learn to dial, b*#ch".

The phone rang one evening when we were all hanging out together. I picked up the phone and in my best imitation of a halting, computerized voice said, "If you need the theater address, please press one. If you are looking for movie times, please press two". I heard the touch tone after the second choice so I launched into "If you want to see Star, Wars, please press one". My roommates were laughing in the background, and at that point I started cracking up and hung up.

The person called back, and it turned out to be my roommate's sister. But ironically, she was trying to reach the theater and not her sister, which made us crack up all over again.

When I got my current cell phone number, I would get calls for "Russ" relatively frequently. I still do once in a while, and it surprises me how many people get irritated or suspicious when you say that they have the wrong number. And for some reason, we are compelled to say "sorry" even though it wasn't our mistake.

A picture is worth...well, your camera

So I saw this story in the paper this morning, The Odyssey: Camera survives ocean trip to Florida.  A teaser:

Paul Shultz was walking along the pier of a Key West marina when he saw what looked like a rotting tomato pounding against the rocks.

The Coast Guard investigator waded ankle-deep into the water to fish out the ocean rubbish: a bright red Nikon camera, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. Its waterproof plastic case was covered with six months' worth of crusty sea growth, but the camera itself was almost pristine when he found it May 16.

However, clues to tracking down its owner were few. So Shultz decided to test his investigative skills.

Mr. Shultz used some of the pictures, with the online community's help, to deduce that the camera was likely lost in Aruba, 1,100 miles away. But he still didn't know who owned it. But once he had the location, and he posted some pictures from the camera online, the owner was tracked down. Kind of an interesting, message in a bottle story with some investigative reporting thrown in.

I recently bought a new camera, because the old one was producing pictures like this:

Every few photos would be grainy and whited out. At least with digital cameras, you know this right away and usually have a chance to get the shot again, but not always. With the trip to Lake Powell approaching and other summer fun to document, I decided to replace it.

As always, I wasn't looking to spend too much money, and I am not that great of a photographer that I need lots of bells and whistles. Just something to point and shoot really. The main thing I was looking for was a compact size, something I could easily slip in a pocket. I am not great about setting out to take pictures, but my last camera was so small I could have it on hand when a good shot presented itself.

The other main feature I was looking for was ease of use. When I picked up the Samsung TL105, the menus and buttons were intuitive enough that I could navigate easily right away. Just with the passage of time, the camera is nicer than the one it is replacing. It takes 12 megapixel pictures instead of 6, and the new one shoots HD video as well. At $119, it seemed like a good deal.

After a week in Lake Powell and carrying it along on the marathon, I have to say I am pretty happy with it. I honestly have been using the 8 megapixel setting just to keep the file sizes down, but the pictures have turned out great.

This morning's story about a lost camera reminded me of a story I saw a few weeks back. This guy has a pretty clever way to identify his camera in case it ever gets lost. I may have to do it myself since one disadvantage of being able to stash your camera in a pocket or other small space, is that it tends to get easily misplaced. Or dropped it in the ocean.

When you're at a loss for words

While we were on the Lake Powell trip, one of the Dads was on the beach with his daughter. At some point he presented her with two options. I don't remember exactly what they were, but it was something like, "Do you want to stay and build sandcastles, or do you want to play in the water, because you need to put on your life jacket if you do." Overwhelmed by the options, she answered, "Meow" in her best cat voice.

I can see pulling this out the next time I don't know what the right answer is. 

Meow 

The Far Side

I went out to for drinks and appys with my brother and a friend last night. As we were heading out, my brother said "have you checked out the bathroom? You should." The walls were covered with Far Side cartoons.

The comic strip was one of a kind when it came out, and when Gary Larson retired (somewhere locally I think), it was one of those times when someone walks away at the height of their game - hint, hint, Brett Farve.

I remembered finding a couple of his comic strips stashed in my desk when I moved. Click on the images to enlarge.

Santa's little helper

Sign of the day

Found on one of the doors we deliver to:

Nice Christmas decorations

The lazy neighbor:


The too clever neighbor:
From the neighbor, "Good news is that I truly out did myself this year with my Christmas decorations. The bad news is that I had to take him down after 2 days. I had more people come screaming up to my house than ever. Great stories. But two things made me take it down.

First, the cops advised me that it would cause traffic accidents as they almost wrecked when they drove by.

Second, a 55 year old lady grabbed the 75 pound ladder almost killed herself putting it against my house and didn't realize it was fake until she climbed to the top (she was not happy). By the way, she was one of many people who attempted to do that. My yard couldn't take it either. I have more than a few tire tracks where people literally drove up my yard."

Courtesy of my cousin Nick's e-mails