Trip to NYC: Day 4

I don't know if I was intimidated about trying to put the rest of our NYC trip to words or what, but for some reason I fell off the blogging wagon there for a couple days. But I'm back and ready to report on the 2nd half of my vacation, before the memories have totally faded.

Unlike Sunday, I did get my camera out on Monday for lots of sight-seeing and picture-taking. We started out Monday by taking the Subway down to Manhattan to scrounge up some real NYC breakfast and then in due time arrive at Randall's work, CNET.com's New York offices. We started hunting for bagels, but then were distracted by a Duncan Donuts, which is real New York enough for us, since we don't have them here in Utah. We got a couple donuts each and some HoCho (as I heard someone called Hot Chocolate this evening) and then we headed out to check out Madison Square as we had a bit of time before we needed to arrive at CNET.


The Flatiron Building. Taken from Madison Square.


Empire State Building, and me with my HoCho.

After strolling around a bit, we walked back to Randall's work and reported for duty. One of the things Randall does for work there is a daily podcast each morning talking about technology with a couple other guys there. Its called "The 404" and they broadcast live each morning and take calls and have a live chat room. They also record the show and make it available for download and/or subscription as a download. As I've been a listener since the very beginning, perhaps since before anyone else, they were gracious enough to let me join in on the discussion that day, and Jon also got to hang out in the studio as we were broadcasting. The language on the show is generally around a PG-13 level, but if you're okay with that, you can check out the show I was on here (none of the swearing came from me).


Randall & Jon in the studio

After The 404, we went to grab some lunch with Randall and ended up across the street at a deli where we got some paninis. We ate back at CNET and then left Randall to finish up work, while we headed back uptown with our ultimate goal being to get to the Ed Sullivan Theater to pick up our tickets for The Late Show with David Letterman. We took the Subway up to Grand Central Station and decided to walk the rest of the way from there. Coincidentally, it also happened to be St. Patrick's Day, and the St. Patty's Day parade was in full swing at this point. We were able to swing over to 5th Ave from time to time and catch parts of it as we worked our way northward. I guess I'm just used to Utah 4th and 24th of July parades, but this was seemed a bit underwhelming. No floats. Just marching bands and groups of people walking.


Grand Central Station


St. Patrick's Day parade

Anyway, we got to the Theater with time to spare, waited in line for maybe 30 minutes, and then were told to come back in a couple hours for the actual taping. We had some time to kill so we had back down to Times Square to do a little souvenir shopping. I picked up some mugs that I like, a deck of cards designed to look like the Subway/Metro passes, and a T-shirt from the ESPNZone. Then it was back to Letterman.

Our seats were on the 3rd row in the balcony, so to see Dave's desk, we kind of had to look down between the lighting rigs. The thing I was most struck by was how small the studio was. I always imagined Dave and the band being pretty far away from each other, and really there's not that much space between them. The CBS Orchestra was great, and played some cool songs, including some Green Day. The main guest was Rainn Wilson (Dwight from The Office), and he was followed by Mike (Golic) and Mike (Greenburg) from ESPN Radio. The musical guest was an Irish band (St. Patrick's Day theme?) called Bell X1 that was fine, but not that memorable. It was cool to be there, and was a fun experience.




I got yelled at for taking this one. I didn't realize the layout of the set was so top secret.

Once the taping was over, we started thinking of what we had yet to do. We decided it might be cool to go the Empire State building, and Randall had called while we were at the show, so we let him know that was our plan and he gave us a spot to meet up with him. We got down there, found Randall, and then walked over to the Empire State building. The waiting line to go up was pretty long, so we let Randall talk us into going to Rockefeller Center for our "go-up-in-a-tall-building" experience, which meant another trip back up a few blocks. Along the way, we made a brief stop in Macy's, the world's largest department store, and then it was back to the street.

Once we got up to Rockefeller Plaza, we got some pizza as we'd yet to eat some while we'd been in New York. I thought mine was pretty good, while Jon was unimpressed. It did seem a lot like Sbarro. From there, it was up to the Top of the Rock observation platform on top of the Rockefeller center. There was almost no line at all there. In fact the longest line was the line of people waiting for the elevator to go down. It gave some nice views of New York at night, including a green St. Patrick's themed Empire State Building.



Once we'd had our fill there, we headed back down to the street, and made a final stop of the night at a place called Junior's for some New York Cheesecake, that really was phenomenal. Great stuff. Very rich though, and I had to go back and buy a bottle of water to wash it all down. That was the end of our very full Monday.

More photos from Day 4.

Trip to NYC: Day 3

Watch this Wednesday is still on hiatus, but will likely return next week. In its place, the Big Digital is proud to present Day 3 of my trip to NYC.

Day 3 was Sunday, and it turned out to be a nice day of rest and recharging of batteries. We got up and went to Randall and Traci's ward, and who would have guessed that I'd run into a fellow Grantsville High alum in Queens, New York. A girl who is the sister of someone who I was good friends with in high school lives in Queens and goes to that ward. Once again showing that there really aren't that many Mormons, if everywhere you go you find some that you already knew. Either that or we know each other real well.

Anyhow, after church we headed back to Randall & Traci's apartment and had a nice relaxing afternoon. We played Scene It! on the Xbox360, which I highly recommend. Probably the funnest variation of Scene It! that I've played to date. We also checked out a demo of Beautiful Katamari, which is definitely not your typical video game, but was fun to check out. Finally, Randall told me I needed to play Portal (part of Valve's Orange Box set of games), and it definitely was another fun and interesting game.

Along the way, I also found time for a nap. Traci was gracious enough to make us kabobs with pasta and peas for dinner. Sunday night, Jon and I ventured out on our first solo subway journey, heading over to the Upper West Side to visit a former mission companion of his that is graduating from Columbia in the next couple months. We had a good time visiting with him and his wife, and then we made our way back home.

All in all it was a nice relaxing day, and a good chance to get some energy back for what would prove to be an exciting last three days of the trip.

I also managed to take no pictures on Day 3.

Trip to NYC: Day 2

Day 2 of our New York trip was packed to the brim with New Yorky goodness. We started the day out right by sleeping in a tad. We had tickets for a 1:30 trip to the Statue of Liberty, and also had tickets for the Grey Line double decker bus tours that we planned to use that day. Randall and his wife Traci were going with us, and Saturday was by far the easiest day for them to join us on all this fun stuff. Anyway, the bus tours start as early as 8 in the morning, but we didn't really get downtown until 10 or so after taking our time in the morning.

We waited maybe 30 minutes in line to get on our bus and after riding it for a while, realized that by the time we got down to Battery Park it would pretty much be time for us to get out and head out to Liberty Island, even if we didn't get off to see anything along the way there. The bus ticket is good for "24 hours" although the buses only run from 8 am to 5 pm so I'm not sure what good a "24 hour ticket" is. Anyway, what we saw of the downtown bus tour was pretty enjoyable, and if I had it to do over again, I'd maybe try to not do both the bus tour and the Statue of Liberty on the same day.



Once we got to Battery Park, we got in line, which went much quicker for having bought our tickets online in advance and fairly quickly moved through a security checkpoint before boarding the ferry to head out to Liberty Island. Entrance to the base of the monument is also available when you get your tickets online at no extra charge, so we had arranged for that as well. The boat ride over gives you some great views of both the Statue and of lower Manhattan and other surrounding of New York Harbor.









Once we got to the Island, we went through another checkpoint and then headed into the base of the Statue. There's a small museum inside that talks a lot about the construction of the Statue, and then a bunch of stairs to climb up to the top of the base where you can get out and look around.


Seen enough Statue of Liberty? :)


After getting our fill of the Statue of Liberty, we headed back to the ferry which took us over to Ellis Island, where we decided to just look from the boat and head back to Manhattan. We got back around 3 and had a full list of things to do that didn't involve getting back on the bus tour, so that was the end of our Grey Line experience.


This sphere was at the World Trade Center and after the events of 9/11 was transported to Battery Park in its existing state. I thought it was pretty interesting.

From Battery Park, we walked up past the Wall Street bull, and swung over to check out Ground Zero, where all we could really see was some construction going on. From there we went up across Canal Street ("Handbag? Handbag? Watches?") in Chinatown and somehow managed not to purchase anything there. Then we went up a few block to Little Italy and had late lunch/early dinner at an Italian place there. This was actually our first real meal since gorging on Virgil's BBQ the night before, and surprisingly, I was just barely starting to get hungry at this point.

We had tickets for Phantom of the Opera later that night, so after dinner, we continued our trek northward, or at least Manhattan-northward since the island doesn't really run north and south. Along the way we got dessert at Pinkberry, a trendy frozen yogurt place where the frozen yogurt just tastes like yogurt (or if you pay extra coffee or tea) and also checked out Union Square where Randall picked up an "Obama is my homeboy" T-shirt.

We made it up to the Majestic Theater, where Phantom was playing a little bit before the doors were to open and when they did, worked our way up to our seats in the Rear Mezzanine. Rear Mezzanine is Broadway code for "Way up in the back". From where we were sitting, it felt like watching a Jazz game from the Bear Cave, except with no Jumbotron to help out. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the show, but I'm sure the people down on the floor (or "Orchestra" as its called) had a vastly different experience. Also the legroom left a little to be desired.




The stage is way down there at the bottom where there are things covered in curtains.

Anyway, after the show let out, we hit the Subway and headed back to Queens to end our night.



More photos from Day 2.

Trip to NYC: Day 1

So, I figured I better buckle down and get started writing about my trip to New York if I was ever going to, or else I'd have forgotten half of what happened. By way of introduction, my friend Jon and I were thinking of what we could do for Spring Break this year, and then I remembered that our friend Randall had moved to New York last summer, and that he was always saying I should come visit. Jon happened to have some Delta dollars he could spend, and I had enough for airfare, so it all worked out amazingly well.

We started our trip on Friday, heading to the Salt Lake airport around 8, and arriving at JFK around 5 in the afternoon. Randall was kind enough to get off work early so he could come pick us up, saving us an expensive cab ride. We drove across Queens to his place in Astoria, deposited our luggage, and went out to hit the town.



We got off the subway near the southeast corner of Central Park and proceeded down 5th Avenue towards Times Square. Along the way, he pointed out the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and then realized that on Friday nights there is free admission courtesy of Target. Being a Friday night, we headed inside and wandered around in there for a couple hours until the museum was closing.









From there we finished our walk down to Times Square, stopping briefly to check out the Rockefeller Plaza. Once we were at Times Square, we were all pretty hungry, and Randall wanted to show us "one of the few good restaurants at Times Square", a barbecue place called Virgils. And he was right. It was good BBQ, and given its location near Times Square, not completely ridiculously overpriced. We ate meat until we couldn't eat any more, and then boxed up what we had left, headed to the subway and made our way back out to Queens.





More photos from Day 1.

Back from NYC

I'm back in town and after taking another day off to regroup and recover I'm starting to publish stuff from my trip. I hopefully will be giving a bit of a rundown of the craziness here over the next few days, but I've started uploading some of the best photos to Flickr. Feel free to check em out. So far I've just put up some pictures from the first night we were there.

Watch This Wednesday #24: If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere

In case you don't already know, I'm going to New York City this Friday. I've never been before and I'm getting pretty excited about going. Just going for fun. Its not for some conference, just me and a friend and we're going to stay with another friend of ours and his wife. I think its going to be pretty great. I'm sure I'll have pictures and the like to post when I get back, but for now enjoy this video that someone else made with pictures of New York and the classic Sinatra song.

The Big Digital Spends Money on Someone Else's Wife

"Don't spend your money on someone else's wife" -- One of my old roommates

It was destined to happen someday. You date long enough and eventually its going to happen. What's bound to happen? Well back in January I took a girl out for lunch who ostensibly was not dating anyone. Her friend told me that two months prior she'd broken up with someone and that she wasn't now dating anyone. The fact she agreed to go out with me would imply the same. Lunch was fine and I considered asking her out again, although I wasn't super excited about it for some reason. She'd told me that she was going out to California the next weekend to visit a "friend". Shortly after her trip, pictures of her with a guy in California surfaced on Facebook. These pictures seemed to imply that they were more than just "friends" and I kind of lost interest in pursuing anything further there. Fast forward two months later and she's now engaged to that guy. I'm kind of glad I didn't ask her out a second time. :)

Watch This Wednesday #23: Was that Real Manure? No It Wasn't

Kind of an oldie here, but you may not have seen it before. Tom Wilson who played Biff in the Back to the Future movies, apparently does musical stand-up and this is a song he wrote about all the questions he gets over and over again about being in Back to the Future.

Random Thoughts on the English Language #18: Does it "seam" unseamly?

Whats the male equivalent of "seamstress"? Is it "tailor"? Couldn't a woman be a tailor, though? I like to think that the right word here should be "seamster", just because I think thats a fun word. Seamster.

Making Marriage Work

Making Marriage Work
Originally uploaded by Jake T.

I realize the camera on my phone quite possibly takes the world's worst pictures, but hopefully you can see enough here to see that a "Lunch & Learn" class is being taught at my work, entitled "Making Marriage Work" and its taught by one Mr. Curtis HOOKER. I wonder what he recommends?

Update: I keep chuckling at the thought of the guy who comes home from work and tells his wife, "Hey honey, today at work I learned how to improve our marriage from a Hooker.", or maybe "Hey honey, today while I was at work, a Hooker taught me some things that might improve our marriage."

The Big Digital Gets an...Eyebrow Trim??

Yesterday I went to my local GreatClips to get a haircut, as is my custom. Of course, its always a crap shoot in terms of quality. But its close, and I don't feel as creeped out as I sometimes do at the $4 place by the University. Anyway, this time I was less than thrilled with the skill of my barber (stylist?). I always get nervous when they're using the clippers on the sides and back and can't seem to do a very smooth job of it, when the clippers feel like they're bouncing off my head as they get rammed against it.

But, beyond the apparent incompetence of the lady cutting my hair, as she was wrapping things up, she did something that in all my nearly 30 years of haircuts I've never seen done before. She put a comb over my eyebrow and ran the shaver she was using to even up my sideburns over the top of the comb, trimming off any eyebrow hair that was poking out. I wasn't sure that that was what she'd actually done until she did it again on the other eyebrow. Now, I'm not sure that my eyebrows didn't need a trim. I mean, they've never been trimmed before, so if its something that should be done, they were probably due. But its not something I asked for, and they've been feeling a little weird ever since. In the future I'll know to inform them that I'm fine with the length of my eyebrow hair.

Watch This Wednesday #22: Tom Hanks, Vintage 1986

I know I'm later than usual getting this out, but I've had a pretty full day. Anyway, here's a clip from "The Money Pit", starring Tom Hanks in which he does all but get killed while traversing some scaffolding on his sinkhole of a house.

Old Book, New Book #4: GEB

So while I was waiting for Gödel, Escher, Bach to show up at the library (can I just say that I love using the online Hold Request system like a free literary Netflix account? Now if only they would send the books to my mailbox.), I picked up another Nick Hornby book, "About a Boy", in part inspired by enjoying the film, but also it was the only one on the shelf at the library I was at.

It ended up being a pretty quick read and different enough from the movie to keep me from knowing how everything was going to play out. I mean the plot was basically the same, but the years that it took place and some of the minor details were different.

Then I got a notice that my holds had arrived at the local library (I also requested Fodor's NYC 2008 to help plan my upcoming trip). I swung by to pick them up and only then did I come to realize what I was in for. This Gödel, Escher, Bach book was hefty. Like a paperback textbook. It clocks in at around 670 pages, and thats not counting the 20 page preface whether the author tries to explain what the book is about, because over the last 20 years he's heard too many people get it wrong.

So, I'm not saying I'm not going to read it, or even that I'm not excited to dig in (I'm currently about midway through the preface). Just that this book exudes the feeling that its not an ordinary book and that reading it is going to be an undertaking, not just a lark. But I kind of like that challenge. Wish me luck.

Watch This Wednesday #21: The Art of War (NBA-Style)

Given that the NBA All-Star game was this last weekend and things are heating up for the last months of the regular season, I thought I'd share this NBA highlight video entitled "The Art of War" that has some great dunks and blocks in traffic. Go Jazz!

A plea on behalf of singles everywhere

Two good friends of mine married each other on Friday, and I had the opportunity to go to their reception that night. As the evening was nearing its end, it came time for the part of the reception that pretty much all single people over the age of 21 detest. Thats right, the bouquet/garter toss. I don't know if this comes as a surprise to you, dear reader, or not. But I can't recall having been at a reception where this was anything but awkward and uncomfortable.

Why is that you say? For starters, it feels like us single folks are being paraded out for everyone to look at. "Everyone who isn't married yet, come stand over here. We want to see who is the most desperate to grab something we're going to throw that, as legend has it, will indicate who is the next person who will get married." So it always takes like 5 minutes to drag all, or most, of the single people out to the designated spot. Then there's the moment when everyone tries not to be in the front of the group, which means that the group slowly moves backward away from the person doing the throwing. Now, bouquets seem to fly pretty well through the air, but garters are pretty much not going more than 10 feet tops. Which means that generally the garter is going to land on the ground even if the person in front actually wants to catch it, and generally they don't. And what a person does with one of those if they do catch it is beyond me. Am I going to hang it on the wall or something? Thankfully, I've been able to avoid grabbing one so far.

Anyway, as you can tell, this whole scene is pretty awkward and embarrassing for everyone involved. I'm not going to come out and say that it has to be stopped, although that would be nice. No one really believes that catching the item will actually increase their chances of getting married, or whatever its supposed to mean, so you're going to be hard pressed to find a group of singles who are excited about participating in this tradition.

But if it can't be stopped, I suggest at least making a little change. I've suggested before that people getting married ought to give gifts to their single friends. Well here is an excellent way to go about it. When you drag them out to humiliate them, by expecting them to jump like trained dolphins for the stuff you are going to throw, at least compensate them a bit. How? By taping some cold, hard cash to the the bouquet and garter. The reception is already costing you an arm and a leg. Why not take $100 and split it up between the bouquet and the garter? If I know single people, and I think I do, you're going to get a lot better response if there's a fisky coming to the person who catches it. The amount probably needs some experimenting. You don't want to incite a riot, but you do want people to be excited about it. Either way, your single friends will appreciate the thought.

Anyway, thats my rant for today.

Old Book, New Book? #3

Just finished Elves of the Cintra, and yes, it didn't take too long to power through it. Once I got up to speed with the first book in the trilogy, it was easy to just cruise through this second book, because it was basically just more chapters of the same story, as I mentioned.

The sad part, of course, is that the final book in the trilogy won't be out until this fall, so I didn't wait quite long enough to start reading these books. So I guess I'm going to have to find a new book to read. I'm leaning toward Godel, Escher, Bach, because its a book I've heard mentioned by some programmers and professors that I've admired and I've meant to check it out for a while. I don't know if the library is open today with it being a holiday and all, so maybe I'll have to find something else to do with the rest of my President's day.

"The Big Digital to the Rescue" and "The Big Digital takes a Drug Test"

I've been thinking I ought to share more of whats going on in my life here on the blog, instead of only sharing whats going on in my head, so here goes.

This morning I woke up slightly earlier than normal, due to having gone to bed earlier last night because I've got a bit of a head cold. I got in the shower and when I got out I noticed that my phone had 1 missed call, from my roommate who is a pilot for SkyWest. Anyway, I called him back and he said he had a huge favor to ask me. He was supposed to be leaving on a flight in 15 minutes or so, but had forgotten his ID badge at home. Given that my work is pretty close to the airport, I said what the heck, hurriedly got dressed and did my best to get out there ASAP. You have to realize that ASAP included me needing to scrape the ice off the windows of my car, and also that it was fairly busy traffic. Maybe not the peak of morning rush, but still, busy. Anyway, I'm on the freeway when he calls to ask where I'm at. I tell him I'm about 10 minutes from the airport and he says, "my flight leaves in 10 minutes, so if there's anything you can do to drive faster that would be great". At that point I briefly considered taking an unauthorized high-speed jaunt in the HOV lane, but decided that if he missed his flight, he missed his flight, and that I wasn't risking some huge ticket because he forgot his ID. Anyway, I did my best to go fast and he ran out to the curb when I pulled up. He called a few hours later to thank me and say that his flight was only delayed a few minutes. I guess all those passengers owe me thanks as well, right?

Anyway, in addition to my rush job to the airport, I also needed to get to a drug testing center for a little side project I'm going to be doing at the U Hospital this spring. All their employees have to be drug tested, so it wasn't like I was being singled out. Anyway, this is the first time I've ever taken a drug test to my knowledge, and the whole thing made me feel kind of like a profession athlete. I was a little nervous, because a) producing a urine sample on demand isn't always the easiest trick to pull off, and b) I took two Tylenol Cold NightTime pills the night before. I hope that doesn't disqualify me. It also bears mentioning that the form I was given yesterday, when my drug test was scheduled for today, said that if I failed to show for this test on the day it was scheduled, that would basically disqualify me from being hired. What happens if unforeseen circumstances prevent someone from making their appointment? How dumb would I have to be to schedule my own appointment, and then get high the day of my test? (Not that I have ever gotten high)

Anyway, as I was collecting said sample, I thought, isn't there a better way than having to hold a plastic cup to catch my own urine? Can't there be some kind of device that could be mounted in the toilet or something? Something that doesn't involve my having to hold the cup and urinate on target at close range? Also, I was informed not to flush the toilet and I guess I have been well trained, because I had to fight against instinct to not flush after I took care of my business. I guess the no flush policy is to stop me from flushing down the empty bag that used to hold the clean urine that I bought on the black market. Speaking of which, whoever runs a black market on drug-free urine has a pretty crappy job. I hope it pays well.

Back to me, though. After successfully filling the cup beyond the "black" line marked with blue ink, I came back out of the bathroom with my prized sample for the lucky lady whose job is to deal with people's urine all day. I was pleased to see her fill two bottles, an A and B sample (I can thank Floyd Landis for my awareness of the existence of a B sample), and then seal them with tamper-resistant tape. I had to sign that I had seen them sealed and that the serial numbers on both samples matched the paper form I had filled out. With the holiday weekend coming up, I might not find out my results until Wednesday next week, but no matter what happens, I'm prepared to stonewall like all my favorite sports heroes. Speaking of which, I think its time for my B-12 shot.

Aren't you glad I started sharing?

Watch This Wednesday #20: Confidence is very sexy...Don't you think?

Given the upcoming holiday tomorrow, I tried to find a clip of Lisa Simpson's "I Choo-Choo-Choose You" Valentine card, but as Fox is notorious vicious about Simpsons stuff being posted online, I was unable to round up any such clip. Instead you get this Skin Bracer aftershave commercial starring Jack Palance that my old roommate would always re-enact:



Also, seriously have I been cranking out these web videos for 20 weeks now? Thats an awful long time. Should I keep them up? Does anyone out there even care?

Old Book, New Book #2

Just finished up "Armageddon's Children" and started right into the next book in the trilogy, "Elves of Cintra". I have to say that I enjoyed the first book, and suspect I will enjoy the next one.

Here's my beef with Terry Brooks though. There was a time when his books were fully contained stories and came in around 500 pages or so. Then at some point, maybe starting with the Knight of the Word trilogy or maybe a little bit after that, he started writing "trilogies" that felt more like single books broken up into three parts, and started putting out one book of the series every year and ending them with cliffhanger endings. Its so much this way, that once the entire "trilogy" is finished they the put out an edition with all three in one book. Is that really a "trilogy"? I submit that it is not. Which just feels a little bit lazy for some reason. I don't know if he's trying to milk each book for three rounds of paychecks or what, but it also means that if you like a story, you have to wait until the next book comes out to find out how it ends. What is this, Lost?

Anyway, I feel glad that I didn't start reading this current "Trilogy" until now, because at least the first two books are out and the third one comes out this fall. Honestly, though, am I supposed to care enough about these characters to remember exactly what was going on in the last book a year ago, to pick up the next book and jump right in?

Anyway, I'm just griping and I do still like the stories. I just wouldn't rank them up there with the original Shanarra series or even the Heritage of Shannara series.

My Musical Recap of 2007, Pt. 4: Leftovers

As I draw this personal music recap of the year 2007 (Part 1: Best Albums, Part 2: Best Hip-Hop, Part 3: Best Rock), now more than a month gone, to a close, I bring you some music that didn't really fit in the other two categories of songs that I posted previously. A few left overs that couldn't be left out.

Leftovers

Pop! Goes My Heart - Pop
The best part of the movie "Music and Lyrics" staring Hugh Grant (yay) and Drew Barrymore (boo) was this song/video that is new but feel like its straight out of 1984 (the year, not the book).


D.A.N.C.E. - Justice
This was a song I found through other people's end of the year lists and Justice seems to be cut from the same cloth as Daft Punk, although definitely has their own sound. If you haven't heard of them check out this song and then maybe some of their other stuff. To be honest, so far this is the only song of theirs that I really am familiar with. Anyway, the official video is pretty cool, but I couldn't pass up this live version from Jimmy Kimmel featuring lip-synching by some of pop music's finests.



Finally, no recap of the music of 2007 can be complete for me without mention of my discovery, thanks to Randall, of Flight of the Conchords, New Zealand's 4th most popular folk parody duo. Here are some of my favorite FoTC songs:

Jenny - Flight of the Conchords
I featured this song on the blog, so long time readers might remember it.


The Hiphopopotamus vs. The Rhymnocerous - Flight of the Conchords
Bret and Jemaine show off their rhyming skills in this "folk gangster rap battle".


The Humans are Dead - Flight of the Conchords
More wit from the kiwis, including Jemaine singing in Stephen Hawking-esque Robot Voice. Warning: One F-word toward the end.


Issues (Think About It) - Flight of the Conchords
As a band, FoTC wants to be about "the issues". In fact that's just one of the things they're concerned about.

Watch This Wednesday #19: Daft Hands

This week's clip is a super creative music video someone made by writing the words of a Daft Punk song on different parts of their hands. The song is "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger", which you may recognize as having been sampled in the recent Kanye West hit, "Stronger". You have to wait about 50 seconds until the words of the song come in to realize what this is all about, but its definitely worth the wait. Definitely very cool.

My Musical Recap of 2007, Pt. 3: Rock

The 3rd part in an ongoing look at music from the year 2007.
Part 1: Favorite Albums
Part 2: Favorite Hip-Hop Songs

How Far We've Come - Matchbox Twenty
I Believe. The World. Is Burning to the Ground.


Makes Me Wonder - Maroon 5
Maroon 5 released their highly anticipated follow-up to Songs About Jane and for the most part I was underwhelmed. Maybe it will grow on me. Hasn't yet. Also the fact that my favorite song features a prominent F-word in the chorus, that I was unaware of until I downloaded it, wasn't so much fun. Don't worry, the embedded video features the clean version.


Speaking of Adam Levine (lead singer of Maroon 5) if you haven't seen the song he did with Andy Sambergy on SNL, you need to check it out. Its a love song to Mahmoud Ahmadenijad (sp?), president of Iran.

When the Sun Goes Down - Arctic Monkeys
I found this song on a best of 2006 list and checked it out and fell in love with it. Especially the chunky guitar riffs that come in after the intro ends. Its a song about prostitutes and their clients. Caution: there's an F-word towards the end.


Welcome to the Black Parade - My Chemical Romance
I probably started listening to this song toward the end of last year, but since it didn't make last year's list I feel alright about including it here. Its a nice emo-rock epic full of angstyness.


Hey There Delilah - Plain White T's
I'm guessing you've all probably heard this song and gotten tired of hearing it, but maybe you're ready to give it another shot. Proof that you don't need a lot to make a great song.


Here are some of my favorite songs from the Linkin Park album I mentioned in the Top Albums section.

Bleed it Out - Linkin Park
One of the aforementioned Fort Minor-y tracks on the LP album. A strange mix of tambourines, hand claps, and mosh pit music.


Shadow of the Day - Linkin Park
One of the more adult contemporary sounding songs on the LP album. You've probably heard it by now, but I loved it before it was a single. ;)


In Between - Linkin Park
I don't think this has been released as a single yet -- couldn't find a music video - - but I really like this song. Again a bit lighter than what you might expect from LP.


No More Sorrow - Linkin Park
Strange to think that this song is on the same album as the last two, but here's a return to some screamy Linkin Park that maybe even goes further than where they've gone in the past in that regard. For me, I like the variety on the album.


The Great Escape - Boys Like Girls
There are so many of these emo bands out there now, thats its hard for me to keep them straight or care enough to check out their music, since they all kind of combine together in my mind. But most of them make some decent songs and eventually I hear one or two. I liked this one.


Fighting - Yellowcard
Definitely a classic Yellowcard song. Reminds me a lot of the songs on "Ocean Avenue."


Light Up the Sky - Yellowcard
This was the first single off Yellowcard's new album, "Paper Walls" and was one of the two new songs they played at Warped Tour this summer. It was one of my favorite albums in 2007 and definitely this is one of my favorite songs on it.


Thnks Fr Th Mmrs - Fall Out Boy
I think in part because their song titles don't clearly associate with their songs I had a hard time figuring out which songs on the Fall Out Boy album I liked best, but this is definitely one of them, and as I said earlier, I really like the album as a whole.


Closer to Our Graves - Lucky Boys Confusion
This is my favorite song on the "Commitment" album that I discovered this year. I like the changes from fast to slow, loud to quiet in this song and can't quite put a finger on what else I like about it, but its good. The only YouTube version I could find was this version set to images from some Japanese samurai-looking anime cartoon. But its a great copy of the song, so I guess you take what you can find.


Sunday Afternoon - Lucky Boys Confusion
Something about this song feels kind of reggae-y, definitely a cool song. Sadly I couldn't find anything but this live version to include here, and its not quite as great as the album version, but listen to it and you'll get an idea of how cool it is.

I thought we lived in a desert

I'm sitting at home right now and its snowing pretty hard outside. Looking for some comfort I went to check the forecast to see when we might have a nice day coming up. Here's what I found:



Thats right, every day in the 5 day forecast has snow. And you know what? Here's the extended forecast:



Yes, that's correct. Weather.com is telling me that it will snow every day for the new 10 days. I guess I can take solace in the fact that next week we might hit a balmy 37 degrees.

Watch This Wednesday #18: Lost is Back!

But maybe just for a brief moment. Lost returns for the start of the 4th season tomorrow night with a two hour special. We know that there are 8 episodes finished and ready to go. Sadly, this season was supposed to have 16 episodes and with the Writer's Strike still going on, who knows when we'll get the rest of this season. In fact, given that they may only have 8 episodes, you'd think they'd only show one a week rather than give us what may end up being a full quarter of what they've got done tomorrow night.

Either way, I'm excited to get back to the island and find out whats going on. Here is a video from the good people at ABC to get you back up to speed if you can't quite remember what all has gone on. If you're new to Lost, my recommendation would be to buy the DVDs and watch them to get caught up because its a great show. But if you don't mind spoilers, feel free to watch the video.



And here's a special bonus Lost WTW. Its a video showing what was going on during the crash of flight 815 from several different perspectives. Fun to see how much more we know now than we did so long ago when we started on this adventure. (I actually didn't start watching until around the time that the 2nd Season started).

My Musical Recap of 2007, Pt. 2: Hip-Hop

In the first post in this series , I covered my favorite albums of 2007. Now I'm going to start into my favorite songs of the year, and as promised I've managed to find YouTube videos of all of them so you can listen to the song, or not, as you so decide.

A Dream - Common ft. Will.I.Am
Theme song from the movie Freedom Writers that uses some MLK samples.


The Way I Are - Timbaland ft. Keri Hilson
Timbaland keeps on pumping out the hits, whether its producing for Justin Timberlake, or doing his own stuff, he's one of the things thats still good about hip-hop right now.


Crank Dat - Soulja Boy Tellem
Yes, its overplayed. Its probably "selling out" whatever that means. But I defy you to tell me that this song wasn't huge in 2007, and that you didn't at least think about trying to do the dance.


Kanye West had a new album, and while I didn't feel like the whole album was strong enough to merit a spot in the best of the year, there were definitely some great tracks.

Stronger - Kanye West
You've probably heard this one by now.


The Good Life - Kanye West ft. T-Pain
I like this one better, and you may have heard it on the radio as well.


The Glory - Kanye West
Probably my favorite track on the album, and as far as I'm aware it hasn't been released as a single. Yet.


Second to None - Styles of Beyond ft. Mike Shinoda
I like this song from Styles of Beyond on Mike Shinoda's Machine Shop label. WARNING: It does have some cussing.


Paper Planes - M.I.A.
I discovered this song on a lot of other people's "Best of 2007" lists and at first I thought it was just weird, but it really grew on me. Funny how gun shots and cash register sounds make for a great beat.


Shoot Down the Stars - Gym Class Heroes
When I first realized that there are tons of songs available on YouTube I started looking at stuff from bands I was interested in. This was the first one that I found when I was looking for other stuff from Gym Class Heroes and probably helped cement my interest in checking out the rest of their album.


Clothes Off - Gym Class Heroes
Gym Class Heroes seem to do a good job of hitting that spot between a song you would dance to a slow jam. Just good chillin music. I enjoy Travis' rhymes and his voice. Also the video features a dance off between what appear to be college mascots. There's also some PG-13-ish strip poker scenes, so be forewarned.


We Takin' Over - DJ Khaled ft Akon, T.I., Rick Ross, Fat Joe, Baby, & Lil Wayne
DJ Khaled assembled an all-star roster for this song, but more than anything I think its the beat that brings me back to it again and again.


I Tried - Bone Thugs-n-Harmony ft. Akon
Not sure whether this is part of a triumphant comeback for Bone or a final highlight in a long career, but definitely a classic song from Bone. They seem to have slowed down a bit in their old age, but thats a good thing if you want to be able to understand their lyrics. Not that this is a slow song by any means, just slow relative to some of their other hits.


Roc Boys (And the Winner is...) - Jay-Z
Last but not least this late entry from Jay-Z. Gotta love those horns.

Old Book, New Book

I figured I ought to at least start mentioning the books I'm reading. Since I started listing what I'm reading on the sidebar, I feel like I should at least make mention of it in the blog when I finish one and move on to the next. Yesterday I finished reading "High Fidelity" by Nick Hornby. I've pretty much seen the whole movie, but maybe not in one sitting and figured I should give the book a shot, as I've heard of quite a few Hornby books, but never actually read any. Also, usually I find that if I like a movie, then the book is definitely worth checking out. The opposite is sadly not as likely. For some reason I have a sense of loyalty to the book that makes me upset when they change things in the movie, especially when there doesn't seem to be any apparent reason. Anyway, tangent over, its turns out that "High Fidelity" the movie is a shockingly faithful adaptation of "High Fidelity" the book. So much so that a) it was like I was reading the script of the movie, b) I kept wondering if it wasn't one of those books thats written after the movie, like when the Star Wars people hire Terry Brooks to write "Phantom Menace: The Book", and c) there really wasn't much suspense because everything played out exactly the same as in the movie, except that everything was quid and pence instead of dollars.

Not to say that that was overall a bad thing. I liked the movie, so I also liked the book, and would recommend them, with the caveat that there is a considerable amount of adult language and sexual content. Not explicit sexual content, but sexual content nonetheless. Oh, and in case you don't know anything about it, its about a 35-year-old who owns a struggling record shop and his girlfriend breaks up with him.

Next up: Armageddon's Children, the first of a new series from Terry Brooks that, as far as I can tell from the first 13 pages, is going to bridge the gap from the "Knight of the Word" books to the Shannarra books.

My Musical Recap of 2007, Pt. 1: Favorite Albums

I've been putting off this post for a while now, not because I didn't find a lot of music that I enjoyed this past year. More because I knew there would be a lot to write and that was kind of imposing. In the end I decided to break it up into sections, for my benefit and yours.

One nice thing that I saw on a lot of musical "Best ofs" for 2007 was that the music was there available for your listening in the article. So I did my best to go out to YouTube and find most of the songs that I wanted to mention in this list. I couldn't quite find all of them, but it was surprising how many of them I could find. And it was also surprising to realize how long its been since I watched a music video. As far as I can tell the M in MTV stands for "next top Model" since that is all that is ever on that channel when I surf past it in search of something to watch. It was also interesting to find that some of the songs were made available by someone other than the artist or record label, and basically as audio-only videos. Just the song playing with a picture of the album cover showing. Its an interesting time that we live in.

Anyway, I wanted to start out by first mentioning a couple albums that I enjoyed a lot this past year, and then move on to individual songs. And as before, these albums and songs may or may not have been released in 2007, but thats when they came to my attention. So if you are upset that I include something thats a little bit old, I can't really go back in time and "discover" that song back then, so I might as well enjoy it now, right? Without further ado and in no particular order...

Top Albums of 2007

1. Minutes to Midnight - Linkin Park

If you read this blog, you'll know that I'm a big fan of Fort Minor, side project of LP member Mike Shinoda. This is the first LP album since Mike got Fort Minor up and running and there are a couple tracks on this album that are very Fort Minor-ish. At the same time, this album also has some songs that feel like traditional LP, and some that are harder than their other stuff, and some that are very much adult contemporary in sound. So while there's not a real consistent feel to the album, I thought there were a lot of good songs and I really enjoyed the album.

2. Paper Walls - Yellowcard

In addition to being a big Linkin Park fan, Yellowcard is another favorite band of mine. Their previous album, Lights and Sounds, I didn't enjoy as well as their break-out album Ocean Avenue, and while I didn't enjoy Paper Walls quite as much as Ocean Avenue, I thought it was definitely a step up from Lights and Sounds. If you liked Ocean Avenue, its definitely worth checking out.

3. Commitment - Lucky Boys Confusion

This album came out a few years ago, but if you're like me, you may have never heard of this band. They play what amounts to rock music, but this album doesn't quite fit nicely into that genre for me. Its hard for me to say exactly what I like about them, but I'll put a couple songs from them in the songs section and you can check them out.

4. As Cruel As School Children - Gym Class Heroes

If you've heard of these guys, it was likely their song "Cupid's Chokehold" that featured a chorus from "Breakfast in America" by Supertramp ("Take a look at my girlfriend. She the only one I got. Not much of a girlfriend. Never seem to get a lot.") Or you may be familiar with the songs "Clothes Off!". Anyway, basically their lead singer raps over live instruments and I thought this was a fun album. Kind of chill hip-hop that's not exactly dance music, but good for listening to in the car.

5. Infinity on High - Fall Out Boy

F.O.B. once again put out an album that is growing on me and producing lots of hit singles. They do a good job of standing out from the large (and always getting larger) crowd of emo bands. And they make good songs to back up their quirky song titles. My hat's off to them.

This ends part one of my 2007 musical favorites. Still lots more to come. Stay tuned.

Watch This Wednesday #17: Happy Birthday Hippo

I kind of drew a blank today, but if you haven't seen this I think you should, and request it next time you are out for a birthday dinner. Much better than your typical restaurant birthday song. Assuming you can find a beatboxing server.



FYI, its from the movie Raising Helen, which I've never actually seen all of.

Watch This Wednesday #16: Show Me The Money!

Back before Tom Cruise was a crazy guy jumping on Oprah's couch, he used to just make great movies. And before Cuba Gooding was pretending to be gay (Boat Party) or handicapped (Radio), he actually made a good movie, too. And "Show Me the Money!" suddenly became the catch phrase for everything. Especially the Utah Jazz PR people, who have never been great with slogans, were suddenly yelling "Show Me the Playoffs!" The "Show Me the [Product Name] lazy slogan method was ultimately topped by the "Got [Product Name]?" model of ripping off of the "Got Milk?" people. But there's a reason everyone loved to say "Show Me the Money!" and its this clip right here:

Mitt Romney wins primary in state shaped like his name

In case you weren't aware, Mitt Romney won a big victory in the Michigan primary last night. Willard "Mitt" Romney was actually born in Michigan, which got me wondering. Did his nickname come from the fact that Michigan looks a lot like an oven mitt? Lets compare:

This is Michigan...


...and this is an oven "mitt".


Coincidence that Romney was able to get a big win? Its too bad there's no candidate nicknamed "Rectangle" because then we could see how well they'd perform in Wyoming and Colorado and we'd have a better idea of how much this contributes to scoring votes for a candidate.

Random Thoughts on the English Languages #17: If the women don't find you handsome...

Is it just me, or should the word "handless" be the opposite of the word "handsome"?

Big Digital = Great Things of History

One of the fun things about having a site tracker tool on your blog (I use Sitemeter), is that it lets you see what search terms bring people to your blog. Today someone arrived at The Big Digital by searching for 'great things of history' on Google. I repeated this Google search and found that a link to one of my blog posts was the #2 result. So if you ever feel like my blog isn't particularly great, maybe you just aren't looking at it in the broad historical context.

Watch This Wednesday #15: Ouch! Help! Spray Me with the Water!

I'm sure you're wondering if I'm ever going to post anything aside from my weekly video pick again, right? Well just be glad that I feel some commitment to the weekly video pick, ok. :) Actually I've been more productive during my work hours lately, and thats cutting into my blogging time. So my gain is your loss, I guess. Anyway, I hope that there will be something between this post and the next that isn't a video. But no promises.

Speaking of promises, I promise that this might be the strangest NBA season ticket commercial ever. It starts Sonics player Peja Drobnjak and I'm pretty sure its several years old, because I remember seeing him in commercials a few years back. Enjoy.

Watch This Wednesday #14: Well, People Kept Ringing the Bell!

More fun with Kramer this week, as he relates his bus trip to the hospital to save a friend's toe.



P.S. Some of the other videos I've posted in this feature have since been removed from YouTube, so I guess the point is, watch it now before its gone. :)

Did you miss me?

Those of you (if any) who read this blog regularly (as opposed to those who get referred here by Google Image searches for McDonalds characters or Garth Brooks album covers) probably noticed that I haven't posted for a bit. Well I'm back in town and I'll definitely have another video coming on Wednesday and I'm also working on at least one other post that's long enough to merit being broken up into a couple parts. Anyway, I had a great Christmas and am excited for this next year.

Watch This Wednesday....or Thursday #13: You Sit on a Throne of Lies

I apologize for not getting this video out yesterday. I thought about posting it last night, but then decided to let this the Christmas Card get a little more time in the limelight. Anyway, here's what may be the last Christmas-themed WTW, a fun clip from the fun Will Ferrell Christmas movie, Elf.

My 2007 Christmas Card

Merry Christmas!



Pretty much along the same lines as last year, I'm slacking off on the physical Christmas card front, and giving you this cheaper, electronic version.

As I look back at the year that was 2007, I guess what probably stands out is all the traveling I did. I don't really consider myself a big travel nut, but this year I traveled to San Antonio, Palo Alto, Germany/Austria, and Chicago. Four places I'd never been, and in the case of Germany/Austria, a place I'd never really considered visiting. The trip to San Antonio was a family vacation to visit my brother and his family who live there, and the rest were all for school. If you want to read more about my trips, and/or see the pictures I took on my new digital camera, which I love, you can check out some of these links:

San Antonio (Pictures only)

Palo Alto (Pictures only)

Germany/Austria
Days 1 & 2 - Exploring Munich
Day 3 - Mass Transit Extravaganza
Day 4 - Stop looking at me, schwan
Day 5 - Austria, eh? Throw another shrimp on the barby!
Day 6- The depths of Hall
Day 7 - I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!
Day 8 - Monday Night Football
Day 9 - In with the Innsbruck Crowd
Days 10 & 11 - The Voyage Home
(Pictures only)

Chicago
Chicago Travelogue, Pt. 1
Chicago Travelogue, Pt. 2
Chicago Travelogue, Pt. 3
Chicago Travelogue, Pt. 4
(Pictures only)

Here's a small sample of what you might find:











When I wasn't busy gallivanting around America and Europe, I spent most of my daytime hours working on my dissertation research. Getting my research project off the ground end up taking much longer than I had anticipated, but alerts are finally going out to doctors, although not quite as often as I'd like. Additionally, I passed my qualifying exams back in the spring, and its nice to have that step out of the way. I also presented a poster at our annual NLM training conference that was at Stanford University this summer. I also was on a panel at the AMIA Fall Symposium. (Luckily the number of people who attended doesn't have to go in my CV.)



Its my goal to finish by the end of the coming summer, although given my inability to guess how long things would take me so far, that might or might not happen. At the very least, much of what I'm doing now is entirely up to me, and other than one small fix, hopefully I won't be waiting on other people. I've got a lot of writing to do in the coming months and hopefully that will go well. Certainly I would hope to have graduated by this time next year, which seems doable, but at the same time seems like it would still be quite the achievement.

Aside from school, I was released from being the executive secretary for my student ward in May, and was given what seems like a pretty cushy job as the ward communications co-chair, at least in comparison to the busy jobs I had before. Pretty much, I run the ward website, and make sure that people get their pictures taken, and that we have a sacrament program on Sundays. I've got a small, but efficient committee which makes things pretty nice.

Also this year, I moved to a new apartment in February just a few blocks away from my last one. The guys I live with here are nice and relatively clean, and in the brief moments that we're here at the same time we have good times.

(Picture not taken in February)

And yes, I continue to be single. I've managed to go on 16 dates so far this year, which is a 15% increase over last year, for those of you keeping score at home (mom, dad, I'm looking in your direction). Not as many as I'd like, still, but a lot of times I just don't get excited about dating for dating's sake. If there's someone I'd like to get to know better, or that I'd like to spend time with, then yes, I'm all for that. So, yes, I do look at the numbers, but try not to put too much stock into them.

In the meantime, I still had time for plenty of random fun this past year.


I went snowshoeing for the first time.


Back in the spring I won our ward Guitar Hero tournament, and then retired effective immediately so I could go out on top. (Not really, but I haven't played much since then.)


I did a fair amount of bowling.




I went to a couple Salt Lake Bees baseball games, and tried out the "Fireworks" preset on my camera.


I once again had tickets in the Muss, and only missed one Utah home game. Beating UCLA 44-6 was of course the highlight of the season.


Halloween was fun.

I have to say that looking back it was a pretty great year, and I have no reason to believe that next year won't be just as great. At times I've wondered if I'm on the right path, and then I have to realize that if I weren't where I am now, I would have missed out on a lot of experiences, and especially on meeting so many great people that I'm lucky to know. I hope that this Christmas finds you all doing well.

Watch This Wednesday #12: Fa-ra-ra-ra-ra Ra-ra-ra-ra

That's right...its time for more Christmas themed video fun. This week, its the part of the last scene of the classic film "A Christmas Story", which I can't imagine that you haven't seen, especially now that TNT shows it for 24 hours straight (or is it 48?) at Christmas time. I actually know someone whose family actually likes to go out for Chinese on Christmas, an idea they got from watching this movie. Oh well, I guess when its the season to be 'jorry', everyone has their own traditions.

Random Thoughts on the English Language #16: Laundry Day

I've got a big pile of laundry that I need to wash when I got home, and that may have resulted in the phrase "laundry list" going through my mind today. As in "I've got a laundry list of things to do in Salt Lake" or "a laundry list of ways to reduce workplace stress", etc.

Anyway, where did this term come from? Have you ever made a list associated with laundry? If you did, what would it consist of? "#1: Wash Laundry"? or perhaps with more detail? "#1: Wash Laundry. #2: Dry Laundry. #3 Fold Laundry.

Grocery lists I have seen. Laundry lists, not so much.

End of Year List HQ

Just like last year, the site Fimoculous.com is compiling end-of-year lists for 2007, from all over the web. Already a decent-sized list, I'm sure there'll be plenty more to come. You can see them grouped by category, source, or date for your conveniences. Recently lots and lots of lists from Time and New York Magazines.

Some of my favorites so far: Time's top television ads and top viral videos, and New York Times' Year in Ideas.

Watch This Wednesday #11: Five Goooo-ooold Rings, Ba-dum-bum-bum

In keeping with the Christmas theme of the month, I found this Muppet version of the 12 Days of Christmas from the John Denver/Muppets Christmas Special. We had the soundtrack on tape growing up, and its forever influenced the way that I think the song, ought to be sung, especially the Five Gold Rings part.

Thoughts I had while doing a left outer join on severity indices

Warning: These are some pretty random thoughts

1) Obviously mistletoe is a Christmas tradition, and at numerous singles events (and non-singles events) people hang this over the entryway to the house, but more often than not, no kissing actually happens. So I was thinking, we should get some new plants that mean different things that could be hung. You know, like "stalk of wheat = hug", or "sprig of parsley = backscratch". How about "clove of garlic" = "necking", which guarantees that only non-vampires would be biting your neck?

2) As a friend of mine pointed out to me, if Quidditch were a real sport, it would have some of the dumbest rules in the world. Lets review: (From the Wikipedia entry on Quidditch)

"Teams continue using the same goal posts to score throughout the game. Capturing the Snitch earns the Seeker's team 150 points, equivalent to 15 goals scored by Chasers. Since the game ends immediately after the Snitch is caught, the team which captures the Snitch is very likely to win the game."

Lets compare this to a basketball game with some Quidditch rules. 4 players from each team play regular 4-on-4 basketball, while one player from each team has to get the special ball and make a shot from the opposite free throw line (lets call this the "long shot"). The game can't end until someone has made this difficult shot, and whoever makes the shot gets 30 points for their basket.

How many basketball games are won by more than 30 points? Very few. So only in rare cases would the team who made the long shot not win, no matter how bad they were. So why are the other 4 players even playing 4-on-4? Just to give the crowd something to watch while they wait for someone to make the long shot? And if your team was behind, and you were the long-shooter, wouldn't it be in your interest to not only not make the long shot, but to prevent your opponent from doing so? However, if your team was losing by more than 30 points, the odds are that they aren't going to be closing the gap as time progresses.

Or maybe a football game where the kickers tried to make a 60 yard field goal worth 70 points?

Anyway, I didn't hate the Quidditch parts of the HP books like some have, as I thought they were a good excuse to show off some broom-flying, but still the rules leave something to be desired.

Random Thoughts on the English Language #15: Gender Equity

So a man can be a 'womanizer', but for some reason when I used the word 'manizer' no one knew what I meant.

Who Do You Want to Be Today?

If you're one of the rare brave souls who has ventured to scroll way down on this blog, you may have seen in my sidebar some of the books I've been reading lately. Anyway, I was reading Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury for a minute today (its actually a book that lends itself quite well to brief moments of reading), and came across a real gem of a thought there. An older lady with a penchant for saving ticket stubs and theater programs is upset by the children who refuse to believe that she was young once, but then later that night she has this thought in the form of a rebuke from her deceased husband:

"My dear, you never will understand time, will you? You're always trying to be the things you were, instead of the person you are tonight. Why do you save those ticket stubs and theater programs? They'll only hurt you later. Throw them away my dear....

It won't work...No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now. Time hypnotizes. When you're nine, you think you've always been nine years old and will always be. When you're thirty, it seems you've always been balanced there on that bright rim of middle life. And then when you're seventy, you are always and forever seventy. You're in the present, you're trapped in a young now or an old now, but there is no other now to be seen."

As I read this passage, I thought how true it is. No matter our past, we are only the person we are right now, and we should make the most of today. No sense in beating ourselves up over past failures, or resting on past victories. Who do you want to be today?