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« December 2007 |
Main
| February 2008 »
Before I get into the Best Christmas Present Ever, I want to let you know that someone attacked my zombie with a clove of garlic. If you have any idea what that means, you either spend too much time on Facebook or you spent too much time huddled in your basement as a youth playing Dungeons & Dragons. I was going to click on the link that said "See what happened!" but, honestly, I didn't know I had a zombie and now I'm scared to look because a good, solid clove of garlic can probably really mess up your average zombie and I'm not up for bandaging a virtual zombie. If you can even do that.
The second thing that I should say is that there was a brief moment - I mean really brief - in which I considered titling this post "Best Christmas Present Evar!" Honestly, if I ever really do something like that and it was on purpose come and visit AccuWeather where I'll give you the NERF® bat and you can have five or six free hits (hits after six are $1.50 each). Internet "speak" has crept into my house via my kids and when I try to explain that they should just use proper English they look at me like the tired old man that I am. But the house is currently an EVAR-free home. I also try to squelch W00T which isn't even made of letters, and PWN which doesn't even have vowels. PWN may just be the most annoying thing EVAR. W00T!
I recently received my Christmas Present from Alert Shopper Tammy. It came earlier than expected, even though it's almost February. I'm actually going to save the announcement for tomorrow as I have to take photos of the gift before I install it. I suppose that's rude - to tease like that - but I generally don't have blizzards, ice storms and hurricanes to drive my blog traffic way up so, you know, I do what I can. Speaking of which - BIG BLIZZARD COMING! Details Soon!
Coming up with Great Christmas Presents is tough. This year one of my gifts to Tammy was arranging for the house to be decorated with Christmas lights while we were away at Disney. I had friends come over and string lights everywhere, and before we got home they threw the switch. As we drove up to the house Tammy was all baffled because it looked like our house, but it was much more colorful and shiny than a normal Schaad house. For you see, we never ever ever (I'm not going to use that other word) have had any lights on the house, although Tammy has always wanted some. Mostly because our former house had 50' walls and it was hard to reach the gutters where one customarily hangs lights. There's also inertia. And apathy. And other assorted issues that resulted in a dark house.
So, needless to say, she was thrilled. The decorating job my friends did was tremendous. In fact, I really can't claim much credit here because all I did was arrange things. But it was one of those great Christmas Gift Moments. However, I think Alert Shopper Tammy actually did me one better with her gift to me.
W00T!
ps/What's the best gift you've ever received? Leave a comment - it's not to early to start planning for December!
To give you some perspective, that's older than me - so you know that's pretty old. I hope I look as good as the shiny plastic bricks when I turn 50. That's not to say that I WANT to be a shiny plastic brick, although with the way 2008 is going so far I would entertain the thought.
 LEGO.com has an invitation to shop at their site. They claim they have over 100 new items, which is roughly 2 or so for every year.* I remember the day I was introduced to LEGO like it was yesterday...I was eight years old and visiting my friend Jimmy Karkowsky. He had all sorts of LEGOs and was some kind of child prodigy. He had worked up a LEGO guillotine** and was conducting mock trials with little LEGO criminals and juries and meting out LEGO justice as only an eight-year-old can do. I have to say I was hooked, and even today I wonder where the LEGO guillotine set is. Surely that would be a hit amongst the youth of today.
LEGO's site does has a brief announcement about the anniversary here, which contains an interesting trivia question: What is the melting point of the granules that form the LEGO bricks?
*This was a hastily written post, as is abundantly evident from the spelling and grammar, and I can't confirm this math is correct.
**The Blog Hero legal team, also known as Sven, has asked that I clarify that this story may or may not be entirely made up, and that in no way, shape or form does Blog Hero Inc., Blog Hero LLC, and Blog Hero staff, heroes or heroines, or Sven, condone the beheadding of little LEGO people, be they criminal, innocent or deeply misunderstood. Blog Hero is filmed on location with the men and women of law enforcement. All LEGOs are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
(Thanks to all Alert Readers that emailed this, as I would have otherwise missed it, being held in rapt attention by the vending machine at work.)
Vice President Dick Cheney is alive! (No really - I saw him!)*
*I couldn't resist. I never see, hear or read anything about him, and was shocked to see him sitting behind the President. Oh I know, you're thinking - "That's obviously a Disney Animatronic!" I suppose you could you be right, although if so Disney has that clapping thing down cold.
 Grandpa, Grandma, Junior, Mom, Dad and Giant Rat Mouse Our kids, who are home-schooled* (sometimes to their dismay), get to read the Wall Street Journal each day. Well, they usually read at least one article from the Wall Street Journal each day. I suggest that they read the financial section because they should be prepared for all of that wealth they will one day inherit from me (pause for laughter). But usually they find some sort of article that they can relate to such as the weather map.
Okay, I made that up, even though the Wall Street Journal has a fine weather section I'm sure. Today they read all about the Year of the Rat, which begins February 7th in the traditional Chinese calendar. This, it turns out, is being used by Disney to market Disneyland Hong Kong to the Chinese. After all, Year of the Rat is extremely close to Year of the Mouse. In fact, if you hold a large, deformed, fat mouse in one hand and a small, svelte, very handsome rat in the other, you would be pressed to tell the difference. (The mouse is the one with the large wallet stuffed with Disney dollars.)
I heard about this article at the end of the day, during my home-school briefing. Sometimes this briefing covers fascinating topics such as IRAs and T-Bills and commodities, but other times it talks about giant multinational corporations and George Clooney. Today was more of the latter, with the discussion of the Year of the Rat and Disney. Now, don't get me wrong - no one loves Disney as much as I do. But sometimes you hear things about your favorite brand that makes you go, "Ugh." Really. I went "Ugh" and it was loud and very hard to miss. Not just because of the Year of the Rat Large Mouse. More because I actually read the entire article.
"This is terrific. It makes me so happy to see the god of wealth here."
That was a quote from Mr. Hao Zhi, a civil servant from Inner Mongolia. After taking a few seconds to get past the fact that I was reading quotes from civil servants in Inner Mongolia, I moved on to see what he was talking about. And yes, Hong Kong Disneyland actually has a character dressed up as the Chinese God of Wealth. Does that seem wrong? It did to me, although I can't quite explain why. I don't remember seeing him in Sleeping Beauty.
The other fascinating thing in the article was an advertising misstep on Disney's part in Asia. Some of their campaigns featured a father, mother and their two children. Of course many Chinese were puzzled by the campaign - because the Chinese government has a one-child policy. (Who IS this other kid that keeps following that family?)
The WSJ article had a link to a new commercial Disney is running - complete with a father, mother, one child and now a set of grandparents. Normally when you watch this sort of thing you would never know that the make-up of the family has any significance. It's a good reminder about advertising in general: very little is left to chance. Watching this commercial now, knowing what I do about the previous campaign and the government policy, I guess it seems a little creepy.
Especially the picture of the floating rat mouse at the dinner table.
What do you think?
(WSJ Article here, but probably requires a subscription)
*Yes I used that as a verb, sorry.
UPDATE: The Orlando Sentinel has the article now.
 For some reason, I have never really paused to consider whether cows belch or not. In fact, I don't think I've stopped to consider whether or not any animals belch, with the possible exception of human beings, whom I think belch occasionally. But now a Swedish University is getting more than $500,000 to study the release of "greenhouse gases" when cows belch*.
How many cows can you study for $500k? About 20. Apparently when cows eat their food their digestive system releases methane. This methane can apparently travel up ("belch") or travel down ("unmentionable"). This study only looks at the up part. It is in no way funded by TUMS, as far as anyone knows.
Methane will be measured by a "collar device." The cows will be fed different diets, such as grass, cow food, Entenmann's Gluten Cookies, and beer. It's not clear what will happen to the cows after the study, or what will happen to cows globally if it's found that cows belch so much methane gas that the planet will be a seared desert in ten years.
Cow futures were unaffected at the time of this writing**.
*Belch = burp.
** Okay I didn't check that, but I did have cow for lunch.
(Disclaimer: I know it's terribly bad form to end a blog post in a preposition. Not only that, but I capitalized "of" which is a preposition and actually ends the title of this blog post. I just want to apologize in advance and say that it's not something I'm proud Of.)
I was reflecting on my last week or two and considering what I've done that I was remarkable in some way. I don't mean remarkable like putting-a-man-on-the-moon remarkable. That would be very cool, of course, but I haven't put anyone on the moon that I know Of.
I was thinking more along the lines of the small things. Helping this person with that; this random act of kindness, or that selfless act. I got a little depressed when I couldn't come up with that many things. At that point I start to get very creative, but I think it's creative in a sort of desperate way. So I thought I would post this and see if I get any comments - what have you done in the last few weeks that you are proud Of? Don't consider this "bragging" or boasting since I'm actually asking. I'd love to see everyone's comments and ideas. Any thoughts?
Note: This post was not written to depress anyone. It was written to stimulate thought and maybe even hopefully spur people to look around and seize opportunities that we normally miss. It was also written to end several sentences in prepositions, but of course that's something that I should be ashamed Of.
Caption: A researcher holds a new contact lens with circuits. Credit: University of Washington A first step towards super vision - and hopefully heat vision - has been created by engineers at the University of Washington. They've taken a flexible, biologically safe contact lens and imprinted electronic circuit and lights on it which when worn could superimpose a digital display over what the wearer would normally see.
The applications of such a device are huge. Finally, human beings would be able to watch Desperate Housewives no matter where they were. Men could see football every waking (eye-opened) moment. It's really Brave New World type stuff. "I'm sorry, what did you say honey? My contacts got stuck on ESPN again..."
Here's a link to a more in-depth announcement via EurekAlert, which talks about how the technology has been tested. (Hint, it hasn't been tested on humans or mice.) If you had to pick one animal to accidentally give heat vision to, which would it be?
That's a quote from this Reuters article that discusses the results of an extensive clown study.
Researchers from the University of Sheffield, who were studying how to improve the decor of hospital children's wards, discovered that all 250 patients (between four and 16) actually said they disliked the use of clowns. The older kids found them scary.
Can this be? Or was the study secretly founded by the Association Against Clowns and Clowning Around? Do YOU like clowns?
(Today's post in no way should be construed as anti-clown, and if you're a clown I'm sure you're very nice and amusing and not the least bit scary.)
 I need as many people as possible to de-cloak for a minute and help Alert Baker Tammy (who may or may not be my wife) with a little project. Tammy has a gluten-free chocolate chip cookie recipe she has developed that is killer. That is, very very good, not killer like you would drop over killer. Anyway, the kids and I have told her time and again that her cookies are killer very very good and now she's starting to seriously examine what would be involved in a cookie business.
The first test batch was tried this week by someone on a GF diet and it went very well. So she's been working on some ideas for naming the cookie/company and asked me to post something to solicit suggestions.
Some helpful info:
1. The cookies will not kill you. They are very very good.
2. The cookies have no wheat in them, and are gluten-free. Usually a GF cookie is brittle and crumbly, but because of the secret recipe given to us by aliens developed by Tammy, these are just like the "real thing".
3. The initial foray into cookie baking will start with Chocolate Chips, but may evolve to other types of cookies and baked goods (but probably not beef jerky). So suggested names for the company should take that into account.
Besides fame and glory and the sense of a job well done I don't think I can offer anything else for your assistance. I just wanted to state that up front. I'd hate to be manning a cookie store in eight years and have someone all incense stop by and make a scene. That's just, you know, kind of embarrassing.
You can leave a comment with any thoughts, ideas, observations, gigantic orders of GF cookies, etc. Thanks in advance for the feedback - it's greatly appreciated particulary by Alert Dish Washer Carl who would like to see Tammy become big and famous as quickly as possible so he doesn't have to scrub too many more cookie sheets.
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A hurricane Katrina victim is suing the federal government for $3,014,170,389,176,410. That's three quadrillion dollars (and some odd trillions, billions, millions, thousands and I think that last ten dollars is for lunch for four at Hardees.) This article puts that in perspective by explaining that quadrillion dollars dwarfs the U.S. GDP, and a stack of 1 quadrillion pennies would reach Saturn.
It's that last figure I find amazing - that Saturn is 1 quadrillion stacked pennies away. I don't know if that should seem far, or near.
So why is someone suing the government for more money than is probably available in the entire world? It's not because they want to take the money and stack it so they can walk to Saturn.
The suit is part of a larger array of lawsuits contending that the federal government is at fault for the levee breaches in New Orleans, and therefore responsible for all of the resulting damage, loss, and personal grief and suffering. The government has admitted that the levees were not up to standards and that the blame for that lies with them.
Daniel Becnel, Jr., a lawyer who said his clients have filed more than 60,000 claims, said measuring Katrina's devastation in dollars and cents is a nearly impossible task.
"There's no way on earth you can figure it out," he said. "The trauma these people have undergone is unlike anything that has occurred in the history of our country."
While I can never understand what these people have gone through, is this really "unlike anything that has occurred in the history of our country"? I suppose in a specific sense of being a hurricane that wiped out some levees around a city below sea-level I would have to agree. But if Becnel is suggesting there hasn't been worse disasters or horrors in our history - that I find difficult to accept.
Feel free to weigh in with a comment, or perhaps a better suggestion for a lawsuit amount. (What comes after quadrillions?)
There's an interesting article about the possible sale of the Weather Channel in the Virginian-Pilot here. The sale of TWC, which is part of Landmark Communications, is being advised by JP Morgan Chase. Landmark's sales figures from 2006 was $1.75 billion, or slightly less than Blog Hero ad revenue.
UPDATE: The VP article appears to have disappeared, but the NY Times has the story here.
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