Ultranormal

  • And while I’m up, let

    And while I’m up, let me take this opportunity to do my duty and plug NextDraft. Is it a hair cream? A wart remover? Oh no! Would I plug something like that? No no no. NextDraft is a clever daily newsletter that not only gives you some headlines you may have missed from the day, but also insightful and often witty commentary by one Mr. Dave Pell. I highly recommend it and think you should tell all your friends too.

  • As I sit here, awake

    As I sit here, awake because my stomach is conducting a chemistry experiment, I realize that while the Singapore Rice Noodles with chicken, pork and a plateful of curry was oh so good when I ate it, it might not do so well once it settled in. I feel like the symptom list from a Pepto-Bismal commercial.

  • I may be going to

    I may be going to see the Kids in the Hall!!

  • Classified: Not Funny

    My dad was in the Air Force for 23 years. For about 22 of those years, I lived at home and followed him around the world spreading democracy like seeds in the wind. When we lived in Mississippi, on the Vicksburg Army Corps of Engineers station, dad had an office with a nice big desk and cool chair. One day, my brother and I were waiting for him to get out of a meeting and were sitting in his office looking for rubber bands to shoot at things. We were in high school, and therefore into making trouble.

    We found dad’s CLASSIFIED stamp and the red ink and decided that more things in dad’s office needed to be top-secret. We stamped his yellow Post-It notes, his stationary, his paper airplane, a brochure for some timeshare condo and a napkin. Dad came in, surveying the CLASSIFIED damage, put his hands on his hips and in his best dad voice said, “Not funny”.

    For Father’s Day that year, we got my dad a NOT FUNNY stamp and some blue ink.

  • Define Fun

    In an effort to not talk about politics, terrorism or the middle east, here’s a collection of random stuff on my mind:

    This morning, I got an urgent request to crunch some server logs. Now, that’s not so fun. But, taking the crunched data and inserted approximately seven hundred and seventy thousand records into a database – that’s fun. It’s on #505397 and has been running for a little more than an hour. It should be finished by 1:15, or thereabouts. Why is this fun? I’ve never done anything where I tried to insert over 700,000 items into a database at once. Yes, “firsts” are fun.

    How does John Stockton do it? The man just turned forty and he’s still a great basketball player. I think I’ve figured it out. He’s boring. Yep, that’s it. He’s committed to his family, his church and the game, and that’s apparently about it. He likes golf and crossword puzzles. In a couple paragraphs in his latest column, Marty Burns tells us all we need to know about Mr. Stockton’s lifestyle. He’s not like a lot of today’s players that live high-risk lives and burn out. He’s even-keeled and boring, and well, just keeps on going. Great role-model, and I hope he coaches on day. Do I have an explanation for Karl Malone? Ummm… nope. He kind of shoots my theory out of the water. I think Karl’s a mutant.

    They cancelled bowling tonight because Maryland is in the NCAA Finals. Yeah, well, fine. I guess I can watch the game and wait until next week for another dreadful showing in GutterLand.

    I didn’t sleep well last night. Not sure why. I think maybe I’m coming down with dad’s flu… I really shouldn’t kiss him when he’s sick (April Fool’s!! I don’t kiss my dad, you sickos).

    Speaking of, I hate April Fool’s day. I only ever pulled off one good April Fool’s gag, and it was all Jen’s idea. Last year, we were going over to the fam’s for dinner. Max was about 18 months old. So, we decide to drop hints like Jen’s expecting kid numero dos. She made frequent trips to the bathroom and complained about not feeling well. I kept telling her to take it easy, got her pillows, drinks, etc. (writing this, I’m not sure how different this is from every day… again, just kidding). So, after dinner, and successfully pulling off this charade, my sister blurted out, “Are you guys PREGNANT?!” We turned a little red, and tell everyone, yes, we’re pregnant. We let that sink for a minute and then fell apart laughing and yelled, “APRIL FOOLS!!” My mom wasn’t impressed. And even now, when we bring it up, she says, “That wasn’t funny…”

  • Give it a break, already

    I know I’ve been on a downer lately, so here’s something that, while not funny, is at least positive. How amazing is Mozilla? If you don’t know what it is, Mozilla is an open-source web browser that supports open web standards, runs well and has some very cool features that set it apart from the other major browser out there (I’m not leaving out Opera, but if you don’t know about Mozilla, will you know about Opera?). It’s open source, which means that it’s been written mostly by volunteers, with some oversight by Netscape (now AOL/TW) employees.

    Its critics have pointed out that it’s taken three years to even approach a 1.0 version. I see their point, but I think they’re missing the amazing feat the Mozilla group has performed. If you look at the releases page, you’ll see a who’s who of Operating Systems. Not only does it support Windows, MacOS 9 and X.x, most flavors of Linux, most flavors of Linux, but also OS/2 and a myriad of others. On top of that concurrent development on those platforms, each build of Mozilla displays pages, with the exception of the fonts available on the system, the same. My site looks the same on Mozilla no matter if I look at it on Windows, Mac, Linux, an embedded version of Gecko (Mozilla’s rendering engine), or on my Solaris box. That is an amazing accomplishment that should make everyone who worked on the project proud.

    Microsoft can’t get two versions of Internet Explorer to work the same. Their Mac and Windows browsers don’t even use the same codebase, and only really share a name. Mozilla is the first of its kind, and a great example of the power of a vibrant and mobile open source community.

  • Yeah, it was a quiet

    Yeah, it was a quiet day. After yesterday’s deluge of posting and heavy ponderance, I needed a break. Plus, work was actually work today. This new job may mean less posting. We’ll have to see.

    Have a good weekend everyone. I’m already re-thinking my big political post from a couple days ago. The world has changed, and well, I just don’t get it yet. The rules seem to have been thrown away, and well, no one’s handed out the new set yet.

    Ok, it’s off to watch Iron Chef and cuddle with my lovely wife. Toodles for now.

  • If this (warning: not happy

    If this (warning: not happy stuff. detailed descriptions of chemical warfare against the Kurds in Northern Iraq – view Reid and James) is true, what can we do? Do we let it continue until they decide their chemical weapons are compact and potent enough to travel undetected they attack us here? Do we finally make up our minds that we won’t stand for government-sponsored genocide, and then do something about it?

    We waited several years to get into World War 2, and even then, it wasn’t to stop genocide. We did nothing about Stalin, Pol Pot, or the genocide that occured in the Balkans until it was too late to save thousands of lives. We’ve done nothing about Northern Iraq except try to enforce “no-fly” zones. We (what do I mean by we? do I mean the UN, the US, me?) haven’t forced inspections. We’ve dropped some bombs on some suspected facilities, but Hussein has basically done whatever he pleases for ten years backed by lots of oil money and with no supervision.

    I’m not sure what the solution is. After reading the accounts in the article, I want to bomb him. But will whoever replaces him be any better? Should we worry about the replacement when he’s still in power? Do we destroy the infrastructure and leave him there like we did the last time, or will he just rebuild and therefore we’ve only postponed the inevitable?

    I think we have to go in, with out without Arab support. If the countries surrounding Iraq and in the Arab world don’t see the problem, there’s nothing we can do to convince them past what has already been done. This truly is a matter of national security – and I don’t mean the price of gas. I can’t imagine what it would be like to see my wife and son die in front of me, bleeding from their eyes, choking to death as their bodies convulse and seep out on the ground. I pray it never happens here, and I think we have enough proof that Iraq wants us destroyed and has been experimenting on its own people to find the most effective way to accomplish it. I would like to think I’m a reasonable guy, and anihilating Saddam, his Armies, his infrastructure and his weapons seems the most logical thing to do. The risk is too great and the evidence too strong not to act.

    Am I wrong? I would love to hear from anyone on the topic… It makes me wish my cheapy little host supported PHP or any other scripting language so I could add comments. I need feedback on this one. I’ll post responses that I think coherently agree or disagree (and if I get a ton, I’ll post representative ones).

  • I had Max all to

    I had Max all to myself last night. Jen had to go to church to herd her girls into something meaningful, so it was a boy’s night at Chez Lawver. We watched Lyle Lovett on Sessions at West 54th and some basketball. We played with Marbleworks, jumped on the couch (he did the jumping – I spotted), drank juice, sang songs and read books. It’s a lot funner now that he has a little personality and can keep up his end of the conversation. He danced with me to Lyle’s Church song, and after I made him listen to If I Had a Boat a couple times, tried to sing along with me.

    I think he’s really close to reading too. He knows all his letters and can point them out (and does – ALL the time) when he sees them. He can spell his name, has been trying to spell “mommy” and “daddy” and has started recognizing words in the books we read. And to think, he’s only 2 and a half. If he’s reading by 3, I’ll be shocked. And what’s even crazier is he wants to. We’re not forcing him to spend time with his “letters”. He can’t get enough of them. I just hope he doesn’t get burned out and by Kindergarten, he’s bored with numbers and letters and wants to go back to colors, shapes and drooling.

  • There are things I probably

    There are things I probably should be doing now, but I can’t seem to get started. Motivation, where did you go? It’s probably at home singing the ABC song along with Max. Instead of being my echo in the four or five songs he knows, he’ll now sing along at the top of his lungs. If I slow down the tempo, he slows down. If I go fast, he does his best to keep up. My favorite part is the middle of the alphabet. He enunciates all his letters very well until he gets to el-em-en-oh-poo. I love watching his face as his tongue flails around trying to get the letters out faster. It comes out like el-ah-no-BEEE! And then it’s back to normal through to Z. I love my kid, can you tell?