You knew it was coming.
(and yes, my blog has been reduced to posting SNL clips featuring Kenan Thompson – fuck you for noticing)
Archive for category awesome
(video link for those not seeing an embedded video – visit my actual fucking blog already)
I know I’m WAY late to the party, but I recently discovered Dr. Steel and I absolutely love everything about the character – the music, the videos, the concept, the gimmick. Wonderful, wonderful stuff.
I posted a little while back about some of the really nice things Bing was doing with their maps. Good stuff.
This shows where it’s headed and takes it to ridiculous levels:
(link)
It really blows me away. Literally, my mind races at the possibilities. That video is a glimpse into the future.
Just wow.
I see this commercial all the time. Its one of those things that simultaneously makes me cringe and want to watch at the same time – the truest definition of a train wreck. It has to be the worst commercial – the worst idea for a commercial – in a while. Unintentionally horrible. But I have to watch it when it’s on. It sticks in my head. I secretly long to dance with a tub of margarine. I hate this commercial.
Even worse is that there’s a website, contests, a full-length music video – even a ‘making of’ clip about the video…all based on this crap.
This is why the rest of the world hates us…and why we’re great.
I’m on a pretty big It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia kick right now.
Awesome show.
Was messing around looking at some stuff on Bing maps and saw a link to a new beta version of the maps, so I clicked it.
Wow! Really nice stuff. The map now changes from map view to aerial to bird’s eye automatically as you zoom in and they’ve added a “Streetside” feature that viciously crushes Google’s Street View. The whole thing is ridiculously smooth and intuitive – it just feels right and it looks damn good.
Definitely go check out the beta.
(note: this is the 600th entry to my blog)
In a nutshell:
An Italian singer wrote this song with gibberish to sound like English. If you’ve ever wondered what other people think Americans sound like, this is it.
(link)
All I know is the tune fucking destroys and it’ll be stuck in my head forever.
Time for a little more fatherly pride. My daughter brought an assignment home from reading class that had been graded and this was on the inside:
Turns out the teacher wants to keep it to show future classes what she expects when this specific assignment/project comes up each year. So that was pretty cool.
Even better was my daughter’s confession that she “just threw it together real quick the night before” it was due. Is it wrong that that half of the story makes me smile more than the first half?
This commercial cracks my wife and I up everytime – and we’ve watched it way too many times in the past two days. I don’t know why, but I love this. I think the kids are sick of us singing it though.
I just realized that I did almost nothing for 5 straight days…other than eat Turkey in various forms.
There was some holiday shopping involved, but for the most part the 5 day holiday (Wed-Sun) was a time of doing nothing.
What a great holiday we had! Yay!
I said it in my comments under this post over two years ago and finally I’m devoting an entry to it.
The best show currently on television by a decent margin is Californication.
The stuff they’re doing right now with Rick Springfield is some of the funniest stuff I’ve seen in a while – from playing himself as a totally skeezy aging rocker to the subtle humor of the rest of the characters calling him by his full name everytime they address him.
Sure, it’s silly a lot of the time with tons of sex and drugs, but I think it’s one of the most human shows on TV too. Some good complex relationships that in the end you know these people care for each other – the realationship between Hank and daughter Becca is wonderful. It’s about as perfect as TV gets for me.
Plus, I wanna be Hank Moody when I grow up.
When we last left the drama of the 2009 season, the boys in orange had lost a heartbreaker in Round 2 of the tournament. That loss stung and still feels like the better team got robbed to this day. (I know, I know – then you wouldn’t have lost to them twice…but, still…)
So as we had known the winner of our Round 2 game would face a losing team in Round 3 – and as expected the team that knocked us out defeated them handily in a 25-0 rout. Which meant they were now in the final four and one game away from the championship game. Who would they face in that game? Exactly who I suspected we’d be facing had we won as I expected – the team that we went toe-to-toe with in the final game of the season. I said then (in that post, actually) that if felt like our two losses on the season came to two of the best teams in the league. Turns out it was true as they were facing for a spot in the championship game.
Ends up that it was the team that beat us in week 8 of the regular season (not the team that knocked us out in Round 2) that won the game, 19-6. Which hurts even worse because we know we could hold our own against them from experience – we came within a hair of winning our regular season game.
So it turns out that those guys ended up winning it all this morning in the Championship game.
Ouch.
Our boys could’ve made a serious run at it.
Next year we move up to third grade and so do all the second graders, but the current division is first & second combined so you see how a team that’s strong in this division could drop off in quality if some of the skill comes from first graders. Luckily, it looks like we have a good deal of talent moving up. With three teams (Orange, Black, White) what happens if the roster runs too thin with the move up in age group is that the third team (usually the White team, I believe) is broken up and used to fill the Orange and Black team rosters. I hate to be too optimistic with 2010 practice still 8 months away, but these boys could remain one of the better teams in the third grade division (and beyond).
I know I sound like one of those sports parents and I like to think nothing could be further from the truth, but this year was a lot of fun. Here’s to 2010 football consuming my late-summer/fall.
Not too often I sit back and smile and just think I had a good day. That’s not to say things suck, but as I get older the little victories mean less and it takes more to light up that inner smile. Also, it seems like everytime in my life when I sat back and thought, “You know, things are good.” it was immediately followed by my world crumbling around me. So much so that I’ve become a little superstitious about actually acknowledging it. So let me just add the disclaimer that I’d like the external forces that control the universe (particularly my corner of it) to know that I’m not gloating as much as simply relaying the events of my day. (awkward smile)
Today I was reminded how much my kids kick ass. Like serious ass. Like your kid sucks compared to my kid sort of stuff.
Today was parent/teacher conferences and report cards.
My son generally does well with the exception of reading – where he’s not failing or behind, but he has to work to keep it up. But every year without doubt we’re told how he is an example of what a student should be – hard working, willing to help, polite, well manner and behaved – just a pleasure to be around. Last month was his third consectuive year for receiving the ‘citizenship award’ that the school gives. He’s only been in school three years – do the math. How can that not make you smile? Add to that the fact that he’s a hardcore middle linebacker that will rip your fucking head off and you can’t lose. We always joke that he’s like my wife and he is – in almost every way. Just read the adjectives I used to describe him and you have my wife…except I’m not sure she ever played middle linebacker, but she will rip your fucking head off.
The other half of the joke is that my daughter is just like me – and it’s true. A lovingly cynical, over-talented cutie with a scathing sense of humor that is both quick witted and silly at once.
My daughter excels without having to put forth much effort. She’s ridiculously bright and has been a straight A student for as long as I can remember. She always test at advanced levels and finally with this meeting there was recommendation of moving towards getting her in the honors program now that she’s in middle school. Plus, she’s the one who always got into the extracurricular stuff ranging from student council to land lab to origami to band to whatever else she’s done. To make matters even worse, she’s popular. Walk down the hall with her in a mostly empty school and you’ll still hear a dozen hellos from students and teachers alike before you get where you’re going – and tonight was no exception. The theme of our meetings about her have gone from “great student, a pleasure to have in class” to “we have to make sure we find ways to keep this girl challenged” – I don’t claim to know how much of things is nature vs nurture, but again, I can’t help but smile.
Just the kind of day that makes you sit back with a kind of bewildered smile and think, “Damn, we’re doing something right.”
Plus, I went for a haircut this afternoon and got one of the girls I like with no wait on a walk-in. That was pretty sweet too.
So we’re still playing next week. Another easy win by 25 points (apparently that’s the spread against this team). We beat them 25-0 in week 7 and beat them 31-6 this morning.
Our round 2 game is next Saturday morning and should be interesting as we face the team that beat us in week 6. Should be a good rematch. Our boys know what to expect and redemption is always a motivator. Plus, this time we meet at a neutral site rather than us driving the hour and a half to their field – which doesn’t seem like much, but when you have to arrive at 9am, that means leaving by 7:30 which means getting up even earlier. Our boys end up being in a car on the road before they even have to be out of bed. Doesn’t seem like much, but I know the team feels it in that situation.
At any rate, we’re the only Beavercreek team in our age group (of three) to advance – the other two got bumped in round one – so it’d be nice to represent a little longer. If we get past next Saturday’s game we’re guaranteed a game against a team with a losing record on Sunday (not a guaranteed win, but you gotta feel good about that).
So yeah, Round 2 next Saturday morning and it’s gonna be a tough one.
We’re playing another game tomorrow morning. The boys came together and played this one like a team and won it with help from everyone, not just a handful of key players making big plays. The final score was 12-7. Awesome game with our defense just as responsible for the win as the offense – a few key stops kept us in the lead at the end.
Speaking of that defense, this past week the coaches made some big changes in who plays where and if today was any indication, it’s an improvement. My little guy now holds the middle linebacker spot – he may be the slowest linebacker in the history of organized football, but the kid is getting it done and is more excited than ever about playing. I think he contributed more today than he ever did on the D-line. For some reason he’s able to bust through in a way that he never seemed to be able to do on the line. Good stuff and he was in on a couple of big tackles and almost single-handedly stopped the one extra point the other team scored…almost.
Looking forward to tomorrow’s Round 1A game. I hate to take anything for granted, but we’re facing the team we spanked 25-0 two weeks ago, so I’m optimistic about our chances of making it to Round 2.
Knowing permanent cold is just around the corner, I took the last two days to finally finish the brick wall I started back in June. It didn’t take more than a few hours on Wednesday to finish planting the base row(s) and stack the rest. For the record my estimates were about as close as someone with no wall building experience could get – we did indeed end with a wall 8 bricks high (as predicited way back in June) and I ended short just 15 bricks. Pretty good for trying to estimate and count in my head.
Then on Thursday we paid a shitload of money for a shitload of quality topsoil. We needed dirt to fill in our newly leveled landscaping and, in addition to running of out other places around the yard to pilfer it from, wanted to get some decent dirt for planting next spring. So we get some dirt brought in. Two problems:
1. They couldn’t dump it inside the area that I needed it, so I spent today shoveling a pile of dirt from the yard to the landscape area
2. One shitload of dirt isn’t even close to what we need. My guess it three shitloads to fill the area – and paying three shitloads is not something I want to do right now.
So my back is sore, but a I have a sweet retaining wall finished along the from of the house with the section nearest the front door left opened-ended so that it can either function as it stands or be continued along the sidewalk and around the front of the house if we decide to go all over-the-top ambitious in the spring.
So without further ado, the wall that still needs 15 bricks and two shitloads of dirt.
A blog history of the wall project: