I get so MAD!

Complete Redesign

So what do you think? WordPress is totally amazing. It’s a bit technical, especially if you want to move from another blogging tool (like Blogger). Also, you must have your own domain name, and the ability to run PHP and a MySql database.

But, when it’s done right, everything can be migrated completely, including all the comments. And, MAN, is it customizable.

WordPress uses what it calls “Themes”, which allow me to easily change the look and feel of the entire site, literally with a single click. Some of the links to old pages may have changed, so I’ll try to address those in the coming days. In the mean time, let me know what you think.

3 comments April 30th, 2005

The funniest picture ever?

The smiley faces are the perfect touch.

3 comments April 27th, 2005

So I almost died recently

We recently got these new fangled AED devices at work. AED stands for “automated external defibrillator”. You know the heart paddles that they use in all the dramatic emergency room scenes, where the doctor shoves them on a patient’s chest and yells “CLEAR!“? Well, an AED is like that, but it’s automatic. Pretty much, you just stick these adhesive pads to a person’s upper and lower chest (in a precise location), and the machine monitors their heart condition, and will only give a shock if needed.

I’m on my building’s safety committee, so I was trained by the Red Cross on the use of the machines. They’re only supposed to be used by someone who’s been properly trained, not because there is anything really dangerous about them, but if they’re not properly hooked up, the machine won’t be able to get correct readings on the person, and may not give the correct shock when it’s really needed.

So aaanywaaaay… I got home from work the other day, and the family and I were sitting down to eat dinner. At school that day, Lexi had for some reason been sucking on her inner elbow (isn’t that called the crelbow?), and left red marks on her skin. Before I knew about this, however, Lexi turned to me (and it’s important here to remember that she is seven years old, and very much a daddy’s girl) and said “Daddy, you want to see my hickeys?”

The first thing that went through my mind was “No one else in the family is trained to use the AED, but since we don’t have one here at the house anyway, I guess I’ll just have to wait for the ambulance to restart my heart.”

After everyone was done laughing at the horrified look on my face, it was explained to me what she meant, and I was finally able to manage a feeble smile.

1 comment April 21st, 2005

Sleep is soooo good

I have a confession to make: I love to sleep. It’s not that I’m lazy (though Kathy may argue that point…), but I have never been a morning person. I have always had a really hard time getting out of bed. I don’t know what it is, but the bed always feels the warmest and coziest right when the alarm goes off. In fact, here’s another insight into just how weird I really am: I used to set the alarm for like 3:00 or 4:00 AM on week-ends, just so I would get woken up, and would be able to feel the comfort of the bed. I swear I am not making this up. I would actually force myself awake so that I could enjoy comfortably falling asleep again.

This leads to problems, however. Kathy is a very light sleeper, and doesn’t easily fall back asleep once she’s awake. If something wakes us up in the middle of the night, I can fall right back asleep, and she’ll lay there awake in bed literally for hours.

I start work at 7:00 AM in downtown Portland, and I try to get to my desk by 6:40 or so at the latest. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post’s comments, I try to walk to the MAX station when I can, which is about a 30 minute walk. If I decide to drive to the park and ride MAX station instead, it’s exactly a four mile drive.

So what does this sleep-loving, wife-annoying loser do? I’ll usually set the alarm for 5:00 AM, then when the alarm goes off, I’ll punch snooze, and if Kathy hasn’t woken up, I’ll sleep for another 1/2 hour (and it’s the best 1/2 hour of sleep ever.) Then I’ll get up, get ready, and drive the four miles.

If the 5:00 alarm does wake her up, I feel bad that she’s not going to be able to fall back asleep, and I get right up, get ready, and walk the 30 minutes. I don’t mean to toy with her sleep patterns, but I can’t help it. I’m really a bad person, and Kathy, I love you and I’m very sorry.

8 comments April 19th, 2005

A little levity

After some pretty serious posts recently, I decided to lighten it up quite a bit. Here are some of my favorite quotes from The Simpsons:

——————–
Homer: Got any of that beer that has candy floating in it? You know, Skittlebrau?
Apu: Such a beer does not exist, sir. I think you must have dreamed it.
Homer: Oh. Well, then just give me a six-pack and a couple of bags of Skittles.
——————–
Professor Frink: Let the commencing beginulate!
——————–
Marge: You awful man! Stay away from my son!
Sideshow Bob: [menacing] Oh, I’ll stay away from your son, all right! Stay away… FOREVER!
Homer: Oh, no!
Sideshow Bob: Wait a minute. That’s no good.
[walks away, then runs back]
Sideshow Bob: Wait, I’ve got a good one now! Marge, say “stay away from my son” again.
Marge: No!
——————–
Marge: Now be good for Grampa while we’re at the parent-teacher meeting. We’ll bring back dinner.
Lisa: What are we gonna have?
Homer: Well, that depends on what your teachers say. If you’ve been good, pizza. If you’ve been bad… uh… let’s see… poison.
Lisa: What if one of us has been good and one of us has been bad?
Bart: Poison pizza.
Homer: Oh, no. I’m not making two stops.
——————–
Lionel Hutz: Now don’t you worry, Mrs. Simpson, I… uh-oh. We’ve drawn Judge Snyder.
Marge: Is that bad?
Lionel Hutz: Well, he’s had it in for me ever since I kinda ran over his dog.
Marge: You did?
Lionel Hutz: Well, replace the word “kinda” with the word “repeatedly,” and the word “dog” with “son.”
——————–
Homer: How could you? Haven’t you learned anything from that guy that gives those sermons in church? Captain What’s-his-name. We live in a society of laws, why do you think I took you to see all those Police Academy movies? For fun? Well I didn’t hear anybody laughing. Did you? Except at that guy who made sound effects. Vroom. Beep. Honk. Honk. Ha-ha. Where was I? Oh yeah, stay out of my booze.
——————–
Homer: You know, when I was a boy I really wanted a catcher’s mitt, but my dad wouldn’t get it for me. So I held my breath until I passed out and banged my head on the coffee table. The doctor thought I might have brain damage.
Bart: Dad, what’s the point of this story?
Homer: I like stories.
——————–

And my all time favorite:

Homer: Two hours? Why’d they build this ghost town so far away?
Lisa: Because they discovered gold right over there.
Homer: It’s because they’re stupid, that’s why. That’s why everybody does everything.

3 comments April 18th, 2005

I really don’t want to get political . . .

… and I hope you’ll agree that this is really more about stupidity than politics. In any case, this isn’t a very humorous post (unless you can laugh at bureaucracy in action).

Lighters have been banned in checked luggage for years, and now (as of today) the TSA has also banned them in the cabin of airplanes. We’re told that the idea behind the lighter ban is that “terrorist groups could use lighters as a weapon to control or take down an aircraft.” While this was indeed attempted by Richard Reid on a trans-Atlantic flight in 1991, he used matches in his failed attempt to set his “shoe bomb” alight.

Keep in mind that you are still allowed to carry matches (up to four books) with you on the plane. But, only the standard “strike the matchhead on the attached rough strip” kind, not the “strike anywhere” kind.

Of course, just like every other normal-thinking person, I’m all for better security on board airplanes and in the passenger area of airports. We should be restricting items that do pose a real threat, like the obvious guns, knives, weapons, etc. If the lighters are likely to be used by terrorists for harm, then they should also be banned from the cabin. However, matches should also be banned, for the same reason. And not just the strike anywhere kind, but ALL matches (I mean, what is that all about, distinguishing between the two kinds? They can both light a fuse, right?)

And don’t try to tell me that the only reason Richard Reid wasn’t able to light his shoes was that he fumbled with getting the matches to burn, and had he been in possession of an easy-to-use lighter, he may have succeeded. That argument is a bunch of crap. If that is the justification, then what we’re saying is that we’re gambling passengers lives on terrorists’ unsteady shaky hands.

It makes it seem as if the ban on lighters (fully three and a half years after Richard Reid’s infamous terrorist-wannabe episode) is nothing but an attempt to keep up the appearance of keeping the nations skies and airports safe.

We shouldn’t do things just because they make us feel all warm and comfy and good about ourselves, we should do things that are actually going to be effective, and that don’t have stupid loopholes in them.

Your thoughts?

5 comments April 14th, 2005

Injured kids everywhere!

Brother Gabe’s recent tale of injured child woe got me to thinking of all the times my kids have been hurt. So, I thought I’d compile a list for all the readers who may not have anything better to do than to read depressing things like this. Ready? Here we go:

Billy:
* Stitches in his lower lip, both inside his mouth and outside.
He was just learning to walk, and expressing his new found independence by refusing to hold our hand as we walked up the stairs to our second-floor apartment. He slipped, hit his mouth on the concrete step, and pierced his lip with his only two bottom teeth. The worst part was when the ER doc numbed his mouth in preperation for the stitches, and Billy, freaking out strapped down to a back board, started biting through his lip and causing even more damage.

* Stitches in the forehead.
Billy decided to do a Superman off the arm of the couch onto the edge of the coffee table. The lesson we learned? Coffee tables with sharp edges and pointy corners don’t go well with hyperactive two year-olds.

* Broke his big toe.
This happened in his yoga class this school year at Beaverton High. In his YOGA class.

Matt:

* Broke his collarbone.
He fell out of a tire swing when he was around two years old. He wasn’t talking yet, and so couldn’t explain his pain to us. It was only after we insisted on an x-ray at our second visit to the hospital that Kaiser finally agreed, and discovered the fracture. We have not had Kaiser since then.

* Broke the pinky toe on his right foot.
He stubbed it on the table as he was running in the living room back in November. Here are some gross pictures:

* Stitches in his forehead.
Billy pushed him down, but luckily the knob to the dresser drawer broke his fall by making solid contact with his head.

Lexi:

* Broke her pinky finger.
Billy shut his bedroom door not realizing that her finger was in the hinge side of the door. Later he mentioned that he wondered why the door didn’t shut easily and why he had to use so much force to shut it, and why Lexi was screaming the whole time.

5 comments April 12th, 2005

Strange compulsion

So I have an interesting habit. I don’t know of anyone else who does this, though I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it to anyone before.

Before reading a book, I always read the page in the exact middle of the book first.

There, I said it, and whew do I feel better.

It’s a ritual, really, and it goes like this: First, I read the back cover. Next, I read the liner notes. So far, pretty normal. Then I open the book to the last page of the story, not counting the author’s afterward, taking care not to actually look at the text, and I make a note of the page count. Then I open to exactly the middle page, and read the entire page, including the whole first sentence that may have started on the previous page, and finish the last sentence that may carry over to the next page. Then I open to the beginning and start reading.

So far, it has not spoiled any suspense the way reading the last chapter or even the last page might do. In fact, I’m often much more than halfway through the book before I even realize that I’ve already re-read that middle page.

I don’t know why I do this, and I can’t remember when I started doing this. I just know that I can’t stop.

6 comments April 11th, 2005

A brand new look

So I’ve been toying with some ideas for a site redesign for a few days, and I finally decided to take the plunge and commit to the change. It was actually a lot easier than I thought. I created really simple buttons (to the left) to replace the text based menu that was there before. The site uses cascading style sheets (CSS), so I was able to just change the one stylesheet file that all the pages refer to for colors, fonts, object placemement, etc. Then I just had to change the code for the Google ads (to the right), and voila!

Let me know what you think. Does it look better? Worse? Same? Also, be sure to let me know if you notice any pages that don’t seem to look right.

3 comments April 9th, 2005

Pimp’d minivan

I saw an interesting Dodge Caravan today. It looked like one of the new models. On its rear window, it had a Bad Boys Club sticker and a cartoon Calvin peeing on Ford and Chevy emblems, flames on the hood and front fenders, huge rims with low profile tires, and blacked out windows all around. And a roof rack.

It struck me as hilarious that someone would take the 21st century version of the family truckster and pimp it out like he was a gangsta, yo. You’d think he would know that once you own a minivan, you have completely lost any semblance of coolness.

Except for brother Gabe and I, of course. Gabe’s owned three mini-vans in his life, and I’ve owned five, two of which I still own. Yes, that’s right, I currently own two mini-vans. What, you wanna make something of it? Don’t think I couldn’t kick your butt…

3 comments April 8th, 2005

Word of the day, part 6

Word: Subtenance
Usage: Can be used as a substitute for “substance”
Example: “The statistics you are compiling and measuring are good, but I want you to also get some more relevant measurements, ones that have subtenance.”

I think Ted got substance and sustenance confused, but I’m still not sure why he was thinking about food and nourishment when we were discussing statistics.

3 comments April 6th, 2005

Has my luck run out?

I haven’t won anything in a while. I used to win things all the time. It was mostly call-in radio contests, but I would occasionally win other big contests as well.

Through my employer, I won a ride on the final visit to Portland of the tank landing ship USS Frederick before it was decommissioned. We boarded at Longview, were fed a standard Navy lunch in the mess hall, and cruised to Portland as part of the 2002 Rose Festival fleet week. That was an incredible experience, and security was extremely tight, being the first such event after 9/11.

But most of my winnings have been from radio contests. Here is a list of some of the things I have won from various radio stations:

From KXL:

7 comments April 4th, 2005

Random old memory #3

In a comment to one of my recent posts, Tabitha reminded me of something that happened to us several years ago.

About 10 years ago, we were renting a pretty big old house in the heart of the ‘hood, on NE Fremont right down the street from MLK. We had just put the boys to bed (this was of course before we had Lexi), and Kathy and I hopped in the upstairs shower before going to bed. While we were in there, we heard kind of a “plink” sound, and thought that maybe one of the boys had gotten out of bed and were in the bathroom. They were sound asleep, however, and while checking out the source of the sound a bit later, we noticed flashing red and blue lights outside.

I went outside to talk to the police and see what was going on. Apparently a drug deal about 1/2 block away had gone bad, and someone took several shots at someone else with some sort of handgun. They missed the person, but at least one of the shots went wild.

The next morning, I saw a clean bullet hole in the 1st floor rain gutter. The bullet had been stopped by an old cast iron pipe that was capped off, but had been left in the wall of the old house. If the cast iron pipe had not been there, the trajectory was such that the bullet could have continued throught the wall and hit me or Kathy in the ankle or leg.

We moved about a month later.

1 comment April 4th, 2005

A little too close for comfort

Check out this story. This happened quite literally two and a half blocks from our house.

Billy, Matt and I went to Grocery Outlet Thursday night (we were out of expired Pop-Tarts again, plus I picked up lunch for myself for the next day), and saw a police car parked at this house with his lights flashing. When we drove back by an or so later, the police car was still there on the side of the road, lights still flashing.

3 comments April 2nd, 2005

New puppies!

No foolin’ this time.

Our toy poodle Lucy just had one puppy minutes ago, and more are on the way. I’ll put some pictures here as soon as all the babies are born and cleaned up. No one wants to see sticky, wet, new born puppies, right?

3 comments April 1st, 2005

April Fools!

Sure, it may have been wishful thinking on your part, but you weirdos can’t get rid of me that easily. I’m not going anywhere, I’m having way too much fun to quit now!

Did anyone stumble on the hidden link in the previous article? It pointed to a page that would have made it obvious that it was all a hoax. Suckers!

8 comments April 1st, 2005

OK, I’m outta here

At first, it was fun, having what I thought was a fun and original site. I didn’t want to change the world or become rich and famous. I just wanted to have a funny, unique, interesting blog.

But now, everyone has one. My wife has one, my brother has one, his wife has one, even my 14 year old son has one. Well I’m done. I don’t want to try to compete anymore.

Thank you Rebecca Marie, Tabitha, Breanna, and everyone else for reading and leaving comments in the past, but it’s time for me to shut the site down. Maybe I’ll be back with a new blog, but if so, I won’t make myself known, I’ll be incognito.

Arrivederci

-Bill

3 comments April 1st, 2005