I’d planned to spend this weekend heading up to Ironworld in Chisholm, MN to see the Requiem photo exhibit that’s there through April 20th (and to just check out the museum in general), but last Wednesday, during my day off, they were painting my office at work, which meant taking everything apart, and putting it back together on Thursday (moving the incredibly heavy Dell computer that’s my primary Windows machine). Anyway, I managed to tweak my back a little bit on Tuesday, and much worse again on Thursday. So I spent most of this weekend on the couch, pumping myself full of ibuprofen rather than driving 3½ hours north to look at some (probably) depressing photos.
 |
| Tailraces |
Which ended up being okay, I guess. I managed to get a few things done around home. I cleaned off the back corner of my desk that accumulates various crap, discovering various things I’d though I’d lost (but not the thing I was looking for, of course). I re-filed a bunch of DVDs I’ve watched since Christmas. I posted a few more photos to flickr. And I rested my back, which almost feels normal again.
The one thing that sucks most about having been laid up this weekend is that apparently a couple friends of mine that I haven’t seen for quite a while were out at the local watering hole on Friday evening, and I didn’t get to see ’em. Drat! But I’m pretty sure spending a few hours perched on a barstool with no back support would not have been a good recovery regimen.
- Jim pointed me to the definition of Libertarian, as expressed on Wikiality, “the Truthiness Encyclopedia.” The definition is:
Libertarian = Republican - Jesus + pot + hot sexy gun-toting naked chicks.
Jim concludes by saying,The odd thing is that I don’t think Dave would entirely disagree with this.
I don’t understand. Why is that odd? Seems perfectly reasonable to me, and I wish the LP would start using that sort of logic in explaining itself to people. It might actually increase the membership. [jim] - The Village Voice does an exposé of Iron Chef Boyardee says that not all of the cooking actually happens in an hour, and the chefs might know ahead of time what the secret ingredient is. Inconceivable! ZOMG! Fire up the Congressional Investigation! [metafilter]
- Thanks to someone in Russia, the Summer 1957 issue of Glamour Photography is online. It includes such informative articles as The Lore of Picking Up Female Hitch-hikers, How To Capture a Girl in a Telephone Booth and A Slippery Bathing Suit. And I’m pretty sure I don’t have to say
Dude! That’s your mom!
to anyone I know.
Weather in Minneapolis for February 24, 2008 February 24 in History
Took the day off from work today. The Army Corps of Engineers drew down the St. Anthony Pool in the Mississippi, and Friends of the Mississippi River had a tour. I went down and took a bunch of photos and got interviewed on KARE-11. It was below zero (Fahrenheit) the entire time I was out there, but I had dressed warmly enough that the only thing that got cold was my chin and the very tips of my earlobes. But when we stepped into the Mill City Museum to warm up, I couldn’t get un-bundled quickly enough and ended up sweaty. That convinced me to cut short part two of the tour and just head back across the river and home.
 |
| Low River Pano |
After returning home and defrosting, I headed out to drop off the film I had shot, grab some tasty lunch at United Noodle, and mail the bills I’d forgotten to mail earlier.
Then it was home for a nap. The morning’s walking around in the cold had worn me out, and what the heck, it was a day off from work, so I was going to enjoy it.
Woke up from the nap about 3:30, spent an hour putting everything together so my accountant can do my 2007 taxes. Then it was out to mail off the big envelope, pick up my film, and grab some dinner.
I’d finished scanning almost all the film when a few research engineers from Honda USA stopped by. I bought a Honda snowblower last fall, and the hardware store registered the warranty for me. So when Honda contacted me to see if they could come out and talk to me, I said Sure!
Three engineers from North Carolina stopped by, asked a few questions, and then looked at the area I clear with the machine. Got a free Honda baseball cap outta the deal.
And I think that’s going to do it for today. It felt like a busy day, and I’m about ready for some more sleep. I’ll be posting more photos from today’s field-trip to the river in this set on flickr as I finish processing them.
- Wow. Communist icon Castro bows out. I figured he would stay in the presidency until he died. [metafilter]
- If you follow this via the RSS feed, make sure to check out the commentary from my day off today. There’s more links in there than usual.
Weather in Minneapolis for February 20, 2008 February 20 in History
Not a whole lot to say today, so how about some links?
- Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir has to say WHAT?? because someone’s ripping off her work again from flickr. This wasn’t someone just doing the if it’s on teh intarwebs it must be free thing, it was someone putting her photos on a stock photography site and offering them for sale. Both are wrong, but while I’m willing to cut a (very) little slack to someone who snarfs photos from an RSS feed, someone who presents another’s work as their own deserves a ball-kicking of the highest order.
- Steve Brust has written a (fanfic) Firefly novel. [flutterby]
- Here’s a set of Unwise Microwave Oven Experiments. Cool! Including such tips as how to melt a beer bottle in a microwave. I didn’t know that glass becomes an electrical conductor when it’s red-hot. [boing boing]
- They say that Cameras with built-in geotagging [are] on [the] horizon. That’d be cool. But now I find myself thinking that maybe I’m going to hold off on a new camera purchase until Nikon ships one with a GPS built in. Hmm. That wouldn’t be doing my part to help kick-start the economy. [photoshop news]
- Kim, who’s apparently happily married asks Why Bother getting married if you’re a man, and goes on to point out a ton of negatives. Me, I just haven’t found anyone who’d have me that didn’t drive me nuts. And not in a good way. [kim]
Weather in Minneapolis for February 15, 2008 February 15 in History
Got an email the other day mentioning that “electile dysfunction” was a new term for 2008.
(being mentioned in connection with the super-Tuesday primaries which include Minnesota in a couple days). A quick search here shows that I’ve been using the term since 2000, and I’m pretty sure I stole it from somewhere else. Just in case you were wondering.
I hear there’s some sort of important American Football match later today. Huh! For me, the sports year of 2008 will begin in two weeks with the 50th running of the Daytona 500 [warning: annoying noise], but then there are those who say that I “just ain’t right.” Plus in ten days, pitchers and catchers report, which is also a possible marker for the start of the sporting year. I’m more excited about the rednecks turning left though, since spring training for the Saints won’t begin until late March (with the league-wide tryout camp down in Texas).
And that’s about it for today. I feel like I’ve been struggling through these updates lately, since I’m often short on links, and when I do go out looking for new and exciting crap to point you towards, I get depressed by the news and don’t feel like I can write anything about it without sounding glum.
- Marc Rochkind has developed an application that will look at the Meta-Metadata in Adobe Lightroom. Looks interesting, and I hope to get the time to play with it soon. I expect I’ll find out some interesting things about my photography. [top]
- As the EFF says, Illegal Government Surveillance: It’s Not Just For Foreigners. Apparently the fight in Washington isn’t over yet. If you’re concerned about the government hoovering up all of your phone calls and emails, you might want to express that to your elected representatives. [metafilter]
- This list of The Top Ten Things Environmentalists Need to Learn has some good points. But it doesn’t mention regulations, such as the one that limits the maximum speeds of certain vehicles to 25 mph (not even fast enough to leave my neighborhood without someone trying to climb inside my trunk), which basically prevent me from buying something like the Zenn Car. If the same vehicle could go 35 or 40, I could actually drive it around town, but at 25 mph, I’d get rear-ended inside of a month. [metafilter]
- This story about Catching Wild Pigs has been making the rounds on teh intarwebs lately. Google knows of over two thousand occurrences of the phrase
Do you know how to catch wild pigs
ever, and over two hundred just this year. Does any search engine offer a way to search for the first time such a thing appeared? Not that I can see. In any case, it’s a nice little story, and expresses why I almost certainly won’t be voting for the candidate from either of the two major parties come November. Update: Bill St. Clair pointed me to his mirror of the story, dated from March 21, 2003. The place he got it has gone 404. - Jim mentions The Baseball Reliquary, saying it’s
a sort of alternative Hall of Fame for baseball fans.
Looking at their website, it looks more like a collection of baseball artwork to me. Not that that’s a bad thing. But there’s their Shrine of the Eternals which does look like a good alternative to the Hall. [jim]
Weather in Minneapolis for February 3, 2008 February 3 in History