Some Blog Site

I figured this is an opportune time to discuss Rich Rod. Or at least some things about him. Or at least just mention Rich Rodriguez because everyone else is doing that today.

For some reason, I got the idea to compare and contrast Rodriguez’ stint as the Michigan football coach with Obama’s stint as the President of the United States.

Quiz
For each item below, please mark whether it applies to Rodriguez (R) or Obama (O):

1. Appealed to the younger crowd
2. Was very polarizing – most people were either very for or very against him
3. Took over a program that was in decent, but not great, shape
4. Was brought in to shake things up a bit – change from the traditional ways of doing things
5. Neglected the duties of his prior job in order to transition to his new job
6. Brought in his own people as assistants
7. He had great plans and had great potential, but reality didn’t cooperate
8. In fact, the program got worse under his watch
9. Read fine from a teleprompter but said some controversial things in unscripted moments
10. Tried to make some shady deals and brought fraud to a previously clean program
11. The other power in the organization was replaced during his term and caused him to reconsider his ways
12. Believed you don’t need much of a defense
13. Didn’t care much for the kicking game either

Can you think of any other quiz questions about Rich Rodriguez or Barack Obama?

Random things to post before the end of the year:

• I was “randomly selected” to participate in the American Community Survey (ACS). I wonder how many of the “randomly selected” households are the ones that wrote “American” for their race in the general census…?
• The checkout guy at the grocery store complained to me. In the course of general niceties, I mentioned I was getting ready for New Year’s Day. He responded with “I’m not going to have a very fun New Year’s Day.” What do you say to that? Apparently he is scheduled to work that day. Employee training should teach them to be cheerful in their interactions with people. The store-to-customer interface should be happy, not frowny.
• I’m no longer the guy who provides food and shelter for the children. I’m now the guy who has the thing that lets them play Angry Birds.
• Shame on ESPN for being selfish. In the past, I could watch various and sundry bowl games on New Year’s Day. It was football all day, and it was very good. Then a 4-letter cable network acquired the rights to the bowl games and locked them away so that the general population could not see the games. And there was much sorrow.

Now that I’m vaguely familiar with Twitter… these seem like items that would have made good tweets. Now that I have a fancy-pants phone game-and-music-playing device, I might consider using Twitter.

Or maybe not.

Happy New Year!

I recently finished a project and tried a new (to me) product: combination stain and polyurethane in a single can.

It worked as advertised, but I’m not a fan. This happened to be PolyShades by Minwax, but I’m guessing that I wouldn’t like any stain-and-poly-together-in-one product by anybody.

The problem is that the simplicity takes away your ability to manage the shade of the stain.

In other words, you can’t keep sanding and applying poly to get a smoother, deeper finish, because each application results in more (i.e. darker) stain.

Here is what it looked like with zero, one, and two coats:

It turned out okay, but there were some spots that were rougher than I wanted, but I didn’t want to add more stain. And there were some spots where the stain had pooled and made the finish obviously darker than the surrounding areas, but I didn’t want to wipe off the poly.

I suppose it’s a fine product if you don’t care much about the finish. I didn’t think I would care as much as I did, but not having the ability to adjust little things frustrated me.

Go with separate stain and clear coat.

Those of you who received a Christmas card from us can skip this post. Everyone has probably already received the Christmas letter (not everyone everyone, just those on our list), so if you have the letter there is no point in viewing the image below.

If you haven’t received our letter yet, then either you’re not on our list or the post office has some explaining to do. If you’re not on our list, the best way to get on our list is to send us a Christmas card or letter. Then we will feel compelled to return the favor.

For those of you interested in what our Christmas letter looks like this year but don’t want to involve the post office, here it is (redacted and blurred version for internet):

Source (in CorelDraw format) available upon request and for a small processing fee.

Merry Christmas Chaos!

Tomorrow is Christmas Adam, followed by Christmas Eve on the 24th.

Thanks to some commenters on my guest post for SCL, I learned about Christmas Adam – the 23rd of December.

In order to help you celebrate each day, I put together this calendar. Think of it as a post-Christmas advent calendar thingy.

Read the rest of this entry »

In honor of our winter weather, I am posting this video I took last year.

No, these were not my kids. We went sledding with some friends and their grandkids. Our kids were just the witnesses. I don’t know why he felt compelled to knock his sister off her sled.

No children were harmed during the making of this video.

Kids these days… don’t even know why the save icon is what it is…or even what is it..

For those of you who don’t know the cryptic image that appears in the save button: it is a floppy disk. That’s what we used to transfer files before USB was invented. And back when a 24k modem was impressive.

Floppy disk

Since no one uses those anymore, it is time to get rid of it. But when people save files, to what do they save them?

We need to find a new save icon, one that is independent of the medium. Like the open folder for opening a file – the file can be local, USB stick, internet, whatever. Let’s explore our options…

Hard drive
Too vague – no one sees the hard drive, so that’s not going to work.

Compact Disc
Not vague, but slightly outdated. When was the last time you saw someone save a file to a CD?

USB drive
Not vague, but not the usual destination. This is probably familiar to most people, but most of the time you’re saving locally. Plus it might throw off some less technically-aware people: “How can I save a file without my USB drive? Look, it wants me to save it to the USB thing…”

Life preserver
Hmm…interesting. Good connection to the concept of saving. Unfortunately, some programs already use this as their icon for help.

Cross
Perfect! An icon to clearly denote saving a file. And it will help evangelize the masses, right?