Kangaroo shoes

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Most people are familiar with the comfort of a pair of true leather shoes which have stretched out to fit the contours of their feet. Adidas looked for a material that had even more give than the leather from cows and found it in kangaroo skin, used in their new top-of-the-line soccer shoe, The Adidas Predator (the shoe worn by the English
national hero, David Beckham, midfielder for Manchester United and loving husband of one former Posh Spice).
I would bemoan the use of kangaroos in such a manner but it turns out kangaroos have few natural predators anymore and are in no danger of extinction.
I'm surprised there are still any animals left which the fashion industry hasn't already exploited in some way. I wonder if we'll be wearing kangaroo leather pants and kangaroo dress shoes in a few years.

Oh, another thing

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One thing lots of critics have admired about Spiderman is the clever wink the filmmakers toss the audience's way about male teenage sexual confusion by having Peter Parker actually develop and discover his ability to fire white streams of webs from his wrists (and by having him struggle comically to learn how to control and harness that ability--witness his inadvertent shots across the bow, as it were, when he first attempts to hit a crane from the top of a building).
What the critics didn't point out is that in the comic book, Spiderman doesn't get that ability--the saavy science whiz Peter Parker develops a web-like material which he stores in a web-shooting device which he straps to each wrist. If spider DNA really merged with Peter Parker's DNA to give him this ability, Tobey would've been shooting webs from his ass, which is how most spiders spin webs.

Could you hold

The number of telemarketers calling me at home is out of control. I've resorted to telling these folks, "Can you hold a minute?" Then I put throw my phone across the room and continue doing whatever it was that I was doing. Man it feels good.

Rub your belly clockwise while singing and standing on one foot

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This article in the Washington Post notes that University of Maryland researcher Ben Shneiderman has a good reason to believe that voice interfaces for controlling computers are fundamentally flawed, and that reason is speaking uses auditory memory which happens to use the same part of your brain as short-term and working memory. Therefore, it's hard to speak and think at the same time.
Using a mouse or keyboard to execute commands is easier than verbalizing them because hand-eye coordination uses a different part of the brain.
I'm no HCI expert, but that sounds right to me.
It is part of the vanity of mankind that we want computers to imitate us. Sure, some people probably wish for Jude-Law-like robot companions as in A.I. for those lonely nights when they can't find a prom date, but that's just creepy. The utility of a robot that is passably human has always been somewhat dubious. When Big Blue beat Kasparov in chess, thankfully no one thought it necessary to have a humanistic robot sitting across the chessboard from Kasparov, with robotic arms to move the pieces.
Computers do some things far better than humans, and vice versa, and almost all of the productivity benefits I'll experience in my lifetime come from focusing on those. I don't want a robot to make me breakfast unless he can do it at least one order of magnitude better than I can. Far preferable to have computers continue to do things I have no chance of doing alone, as a human being.

Don't be silly, wabbit

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Every day I flip through IMDb's entertainment news area, because occasionally you'll find some gems.
Here's one:
"More than 1,200 people have signed an online petition in a bid to ban Peter Jackson from calling the second Lord Of The Rings movie The Two Towers. The petition argues that Jackson is referring to the attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center last September even though author J.R.R. Tolkien's novel, "The Two Towers," was written 48 years ago . A statement on the site insists, "The title is clearly meant to refer to the attacks on the World Trade Center." It continues, "When I learned that there apparently was to be a sequel, I was overjoyed. However, Peter Jackson has decided to tastelessly name the sequel The Two Towers. "In this post-September 11 world, it is unforgivable that this should be allowed to happen. The idea is both offensive and morally repugnant.
"Hopefully, when Peter Jackson and, more importantly, New Line Cinema, see the number of signatures on this petition, the title will be changed to something a little more sensitive." A voice of reason does appear on the site. One internet surfer points out, "'The Two Towers' is the title of the J.R.R. Tolkien book originally published in 1954. The title was thus established some 47 years prior to the attacks on the World Trade Centre towers."
I'm all for sensitivity, but some people have way too much time on their hands. Somewhere Peter Jackson is in his Lord of the Rings pajamas, reading the morning newspaper, and laughing his ass off.
Here's another:
"Lord Of The Rings star Orlando Bloom has been spotted in the arms of cool Hollywood babe Christina Ricci. According to British teen magazine Just 17, the pair were seen leaving a Hollywood party after the Sleepy Hollow actress fell ill. Ricci reportedly vomited in the street while Bloom--he's elf Legolas in Peter Jackson's fantasy epic--held back her hair and whispered sweet nothings in her ear. Neither party has yet confirmed the story."
That's reporting for you, somehow being privy to this whispered conversation of "sweet nothings." One can be jealous that someone is making money off of selling a magazine titled Just 17, but far better to laugh and admit that
an occasional flip through an issue of People magazine is satisfying in the way that a fart joke can be both juvenile and temporarily humorous. Or that a situation like this one will elicit a mild chuckle, unless, of course, it happens to be your neighbor. Is that a pair of breasts or a penis? Or both?
Some things are not quite as humorous. Like this six page manifesto written by Luke Helder, the man being charged with the recent mailbox bombings in several states in the U.S. Odd subject matter. Everything from urging the gov't to lighten up on marijuana to a discussion of dreaming to a rant against public school obsession with book smarts over common sense. Some of which is sensible, but trying to blow up some of your fellow citizens is hardly the best way to win sympathy for your cause.

Jaguar

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The next release of Mac OSX, code named Jaguar, looks pretty cool.
What else is cool? The new Ti notebook G4. So cool. Already my Ti notebook looks outdated.
And the Apple Cinema HD Display. Too cool.
I'm a lifelong Windows PC user, but I've got to admit, Apple is winning me over with its latest set of products. The design is beautiful, and Windows XP just doesn't really excite me at all. Neither does Office XP. Not that Office isn't a great application, but it's so good that every next release has to promise quantum improvements to justify hundreds of dollars in upgrade costs, and neither Windows XP of Office XP does it for me.

Amazing

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Barry Bonds is having such an amazing stretch of offense (at last check his on-base percentage was .628--that's a beer league softball stat!!!) that he's actually not benefitting his team as much as walks normally benefit a team.
.628 OBP!!! An .899 slugging percentage!!! 40 walks and 5 strikeouts!
I absolutely have to get to Pac Bell stadium this year to see him play a game. Unbelievable.
Our softball team had its first game of the season. It was a nail-biter, but we managed to pull out a win in the bottom of the last inning, 10-9. Rich brought me home with a sac fly to win it. Since we only won one game last year, this one was huge. I was actually a bit jittery getting out there for the first time, not sure how good we'd be. But after out first one-two-three inning and after my first hit, I realized that the other team wasn't necessarily any better than we were. We'll be competitive this year if we play solid defense and avoid flyball outs.
I played right field today and got lots of action, which is fun. I wanted them to hit every ball my way. I enjoy standing out there and reading the batter, watching him warm up, looking at his swing, his stance, and moving myself around to get in the best position to catch the ball. There's an art to that.
My favorite type of fly ball to chase is the deep one over your head. The kind where you just turn and run as hard as you can and then, at some point, and you just know what point that is based on your body's internal clock and your split second assessment of how the ball left the bat and what trajectory it was on, you turn back and try and pick up the ball in the sky with your eye (again, your brain has guessed where the ball should be by that point and points your eyes there first) and then you reach out and hope you can pull it in over your shoulder. I got one to chase down like that tonight and it was the most fun I had all night.

Hmmm...

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According to UnderTheKnife, "A very good source has given us a bit of scoop regarding the Cubs and a potential trade. The Rangers have offered the Cubs Ivan Rodriguez and Gabe Kapler in return for Robert Machado, Jason Bere, Carlos Zambrano, and Todd Wellemeyer (currently in A-FSL). Obviously, the trade isn't hot since Pudge cannot be traded while on the DL and Kapler isn't a great fit for the Cubs, but Andy McPhail left discussions open."
Pudge isn't what he once was and is unlikely to be able to play anywhere near a full season again, but it wouldn't take much to improve on the offensive ineptitude of the Cubs catchers in recent history.
Can't wait to see the Cubbies call up Mark Prior.

The two most irrational behaviors

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I've heard Jeff Bezos say this before. The two most irrational human behaviors are how little research they do before buying a stock or choosing a doctor. People buy stocks based on hearing self-proclaimed experts on CNBC touting the ticker symbol, or based on magazine articles, or tips from their relatives. I'm not even sure they even do nearly that much research when selecting a doctor.
By the way, I'm guilty of both, and I've paid dearly for those mistakes. The first doctor who diagnosed my knee surgery thought it was a sprain. Turns out I had torn my ACL, MCL, and some cartilage. Oops. You bet I switched to another doctor for my ACL reconstruction, and I chose him after careful reference checks. Thankfully, with the stock market battered and beaten this past year, I don't have to listen to too many stock tips anymore.
I would add one other puzzling behavior to this list. I'm surprised by how little research people do before jumping into marriage or parenthood. You can sell a bad stock or switch doctors if he or she fails to provide decent care (don't try it with a brain surgeon). But pick the wrong spouse and you've gone through the huge ordeal of marriage (and forced most of your friends and family to go through it, too), sworn devotion for life in front of God and dozens of witnesses, and tied your lives and futures together. If you go a step further and decide to have kids without thinking it through, you've compounded the error by screwing up their lives as well.
That's not to say I don't admire the courage it takes to commit to a marriage. Perhaps people recognize that their spouses are likely to change but they're going to stick it out and work through those inevitable changes no matter what. But something tells me many people don't, since one in two marriages ends in divorce.
It's the modern day, and there are ways around this. Every couple, before deciding to get married, should travel abroad together. Or they should live together for a short while. Both will draw out all those little annoying habits or personality quirks in your prospective mate which might just drive you nuts if drawn out over a lifetime.
You should check your spouse out playing some competitive sport. People's true personalities come out on the playing field. That, for better or worse, is the person you're marrying. It may not come out when you're out at some nice restaurant sipping on Cabernet and sucking on opposite ends of a strand of spaghetti while an Italian water sings Ave Maria by your table side.
Before anyone has kids, they should practice babysitting for a niece or nephew for a summer or something like that. Or they should do an in-depth examination of some child they know who has grown up in front of their eyes, studying their interactions with their parents. I'm convinced that kids will never love their parents as much as their parents love them. Parent child relationships are more asymmetrical in responsibility than that between husband and wife. If you plan to let a nanny or babysitter raise your kid, don't have one.
Of course, all this is coming from a guy who hasn't had to deal with either marriage or parenting. So disregard everything you've just read. I have no idea what I'm talking about.
How did I get started on this whole thread anyway? Oh yeah. Don't take stock picks from strangers. Damn. I had an interesting point to make, but it's not coming through. The thought is there, but it's just out of reach. Not one of my more eloquent days. This insomnia is death to clear thinking.

Inevitable nuclear attack on U.S.?

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At the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting, famed investor Warren Buffett told gatherers that some sort of nuclear attack on America is inevitable. "It will happen," he told shareholders at Berkshire Hathaway's (NYSE: BRK.A) annual meeting. "Whether it will happen in 10 years or 10 minutes, or 50 years... it's virtually a certainty."
Of course, he made those comments in the context of discussing the insurance industry (among Berkshire Hathaway's holdings is General Re, the insurance company, which like other property casualty insurers lost billions of dollars in the wake of Sept. 11).
Now plenty of people have already predicted such things, but Buffett gets attention because he's the second richest man in the world. Soon after Sept. 11 I had thought the same thing, that we now lived in a world where the U.S. would always be under attack, but in the past few weeks it had faded from my mind like the insane relative locked in the basement. But Buffett brought it back into the foreground, and it made me think a couple of things, none too profound in their own rights, but I wanted to set them down anyway.
One: our world is screwed up. You have people killing each other the world over and it's been happening for as long as people have been around. Sure, I'm in meetings all the time where I hear the statement, "Reasonable people can agree to disagree," but still, it doesn't mean you have to blast each other to kingdom come. Every day I read about Israelis and Palestinians engaged in urban warfare, bodies piling up, and I wonder how reasonable people really are if they agree to disagree at that level?
I'm at a point in my life where I feel like I can go most places in the U.S. without worrying about racism or crazy religious fanatics running into a restaurant where I'm eating with twenty pounds of C4 strapped to their chest. Am I more enlightened or just damn lucky I grew up in the company of more reasonable people (probably the latter)? I've traveled the world, met lots of people my age, and I've liked most all of them. I can't believe that we're born with such capacity for violence. We're definitely not saints at birth, either, but where along the path of life do we decide that there's some idea worth killing someone else for? What type of ideas have that type of power? I find it especially frustrating when the nature of the conflict is historical in nature. Some of this generation must feel like
Romeo and Juliet trying just to have a good time without the Montague and Capulet family rivalry hanging over their heads.
Two: What am I doing to contribute to world peace? I admit to not being the world's shining example of public service and social activism. I'd like to think my social conscience is late-blooming. Being a middle manager in a public corporation that sells stuff--is that enough? What's my lot in life? I used to look askance on a career in politics but I can understand now why it appeals to so many. I also understand why lots of extremely wealthy people (the Ted Turners of the world) dive headlong into politics late in life.
If there's a chance that a nuclear bomb could incinerate me or people I love tomorrow, two alternatives present themselves to me. One would be to quit my job and figure out a way to stop the madness. That path is likely strewn with the corpses of poor idealists who got frustrated starting from the bottom, couldn't pay rent, and got out. Not all of us have the bank of a Ted Turner. Two would be to call the world senseless and just go off and do all the things you've ever wanted to do and wait for the end. Search for big love, the big wave, the big mountain.
Jason and I were chatting yesterday about why a corporate drama would never draw well on television. The general public at large doesn't care because it's not life or death and it's not situational comedy. If the show's not set in the courtroom or the emergency room or on the mean streets where bad people carry guns and no qualms, it's not worth sacrificing a prime time hour, including commercials, to watch it on television. Maybe it also lacks the drama or urgency to build a career on.
I have a mid-life crisis every other week these days.
You can certainly understand why millions of people just want to spend a few hours of their weekend watching Spiderman. The darkened theater is a cocoon of escapist dream stuff. This world would be unbearable without our entertainment industry.
On a lighter note, People Magazine released their annual fifty most beautiful people list, and I once again failed to make the cut. Okay, I could understand losing to some of those people, but Jimmy Fallon? Puh-lease. I'm funnier and better looking than him.

Roll your own blog

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Webmonkey ran a nice article on the most popular weblog solutions on the Net. If you're looking to start a weblog, you should check it out. Options covered include Blogger, Diaryland, Pitas, Greymatter, Movable Type, and Radio Userland.
I use Blogger, and it has worked fairly well. I've thought about trying out some of the other services, but I don't have the time, and why fix something that isn't broken? If I did switch, however, I'd probably start with Movable Type.
The mainstream press is all over blogging now. Every week some big publication picks up on the phenomenon (Wired, USA Today, Time, The Washington Post, among others). Today it's the New York Times with the article "At Large in the Blogsphere". Some established, credentialed media folks are criticizing bloggers for being inarticulate, narcissistic amateurs. Often, they're right. But many mainstream journalists are guilty themselves of being dull and slow on the draw. Some of the most interesting news or phenomenon now break in blogs, and some journalists are willing to acknowledge the strengths of blogdom.
The only casualty of my weblog has been my personal journal and my handwriting. My fountain pens don't get as much use as they once did. Joannie wants me to write all the guest cards for her wedding. I hope she hasn't seen some of my recent chicken scratch.
With the ubiquity of computers and e-mail and electronic input devices, handwriting is losing market share because it's slower than typing and often less legible. What's lost is the insight that a person's handwriting provides. The actual form and shape of a person's letters often provides more content than the meaning of the words themselves. I don't miss most of the birthday or Xmas cards I used to receive--most don't say very much anyway.
I plan on making a coffee table book this year with photos of people I know. If I do, one thing I'd have everyone do is hand write a page of notes to face each of their photos, with a short story about themselves. If I could have just one really nice photo of every person I'm close to, that would be enough. It would be nice and compact. Everything else is memory and imagination.

Pronounce you man and girlfriend

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Today Scott, on bended knee, asked Lorin to be his girlfriend. Long-distance. A small group of us gathered for the ceremony at brunch at the Edgewater Inn.
Rich gave a speech, I was best man and presented the ring, a beautiful $18 number from Nordstrom...not a dry eye in the crowd.
You may wonder why asking a girl out requires such ado. If you do, you don't know Scott. Commitment is a four-letter word in his vocabulary. Was.
I'm happy for him. He seems much happier than he's been in a long time with Lo, and this will be a healthy new chapter in his life.
I was happy to be his ring bearer. One thing he did for me which I'll always remember. Back in 98, the night before my knee surgery, Scott visited me in the hospital and brought me a few things: a Dick's cheeseburger, a large bag of Doritos, and some needed company. I'd only been in Seattle for about a year and there wasn't exactly a line of people knocking down my hospital door.
More than my knee needed reconstruction. I'd lost my mother a few months earlier, had a broken heart, and was sick of Seattle and my job. My knee injury had been previously misdiagnosed and so I mangled it worse than before. My 24th year in this world was undoubtedly a low point.
As I gorged myself on the junk food, a welcome respite from hospital meals (why is hospital food so terrible when they're supposed to places that heal?), we chatted about random things. I can't remember a single thing we chatted about, but it didn't matter. It helped me pass one pleasant night that year, and there weren't many of those.
The next day they rebuilt my knee. Then another loyal friend Aaron came and picked me up. As I rolled out to the sidewalk in my wheelchair, I threw up the cheeseburger and the Doritos just short of Aaron's car. They had gotten me through the surgery and their work was done.
Now, just four years later, Aaron's engaged, and Scott has a girlfriend, which for him is an engagement. I like to think it's karma for the kindness they showed me then.

114 big ones

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Spiderman made an estimated $114 million in its opening weekend, setting the record for the largest opening weekend ever, smashing the record set by Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone for a 3-day opening.
Formula for big-time opening weekend:
1. Movie that appeals equally to males and females (action for boys, love story for girls)
2. Movie that appeals equally to the old and the young (older generation grew up with Spiderman, young kids familiar with Tobey and Kirsten)
3. Release during time of year when many people can go see a movie (start of summer or holiday season)
4. Hype. Hype. Hype. Run impressive trailers for months leading up to opening weekend.
5. Story people already know. See Harry Potter or any sequel for proof.
I didn't hate Spiderman, I didn't love it. Half the fun of seeing big summer blockbuster films is rounding up friends, fighting to nab tickets for the primo opening night show, coordinating everyone to show up in the right place, sitting in a darkened theater full of hyped-up kids, cheering when a trailer for another blockbuster film plays, and shouting at the screen throughout the film. And, if you're lucky, the film is so good that everyone is clapping and cheering at the end.
Friday night had most of the above. A big crew of friends. Hyped up kids in the theater. Some decent trailers for a few other Columbia films (Columbia is in franchise mode this summer--MIB II, Stuart Little) but no Hulk trailer. I wore my glasses for the first time and the screen was sharper than normal.
But the sound system at Meridian 16 is terrible. I'm spoiled by holding the remote control at home in my home theater and being able to toggle volume up or down to my heart's delight. Meridian doesn't have digital sound and doesn't even turn the volume up enough to hear all the dialogue. Unless I have to, I'm boycotting that damn theater. Most theaters in Seattle have terrible sound systems. If I didn't have a good home theater at home I'd have to move to a different city.

Episode II stuff

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Episode II commercials in Quicktime (RealVideo and Windows Media Player look really shabby next to Quicktime--that's just my subjective observation). If you don't want to see too much of the good footage from the film, don't watch these. They do get me fired up though. Should I do another Star Wars movie marathon? 4 films--that's a lot of movie watching.
Also, an Episode II music video for Across the Stars by John Williams.
Tickets for Episode II went on sale this weekend. I've been so busy at work I completely lost track, otherwise I would have been out in line overnight waiting for tickets. As it is, I had to scramble a bit. A few phone calls to highly placed officials, a few bribes, a few favors called in. I'll be set for opening night.
Am thinking this weekend could be time to revive my Star Wars movie marathon.

Insomnia, and Timbuktu

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Have had trouble sleeping recently. That means I feel tired all day, and I lie in bed feeling tired, but I can't fall asleep. Toss and turn, bury head under pillow insomnia. Miserable. Occasionally it happens, but in the past it was a result of caffeine consumption. But I stay away from coffee and soda now, so who knows what it is.
Light-year is a measure of distance, not time. People misuse it in conversation all the time. Do they really mean 5.88 trillion miles, approximately? I think not.
My glasses are done. I have to go pick them up sometime. That's another problem I need to solve. My office, or Amazon headquarters, is out in the middle of nowhere. During the week, I can never get to the post office, or the bank, or the dry cleaners, or the photo lab. Then the weekend comes and I spend half of it running around doing errands, when parking is scarce and traffic is lousy. I nee to carve out some errand-running time midweek.
I'm excited. My first real glasses. When, oh when, to pull them out? Perhaps at Spiderman on Friday night. Unlike the superhero on screen, by donning the glasses I'll be transforming into an even more mortal version of myself. Superman turning into Clark Kent. I'd like to be Clark Kent for a while. After all, it's Clark who gets to date Lois.
I'm guessing the best part about Spiderman will be the score by Danny Elfman. Unfortunately, the just released soundtrack only includes a few tracks by Danny because it's a soundtrack and not a score. Free Danny Elfman! Do we really need to hear the Theme from Spiderman as rendered by Aerosmith?
On a side note, it's quite annoying that because of non-standard browser implementations, certain convenient Blogger buttons like hyperlinking don't show up on when using any of the Mac browsers. I was hoping Mozilla 1.0 would solve it, but it doesn't.
Based on feedback from Ken, I've upped the font on these posts to 11px. Hopefully that's a bit easier to read for most of you. If you haven't checked in the past day or two, you missed my brief foray into 10px posts. Something about large fonts brings out the snob in me--reminds me or large print books.
It's pastime, not pasttime. Derives from "pass time" and not "past time". Of course, that raises the issue of why not passtime, but let's not go there. Also, instead of "in actuality" just say "actually." When writing, avoid redundant acronyms like SAT test, PIN number, UPC code. "Ought" should always be followed by an infinitive, so either "ought to" or "ought not to". Many people use "ought not" when they should use "ought not to".
Maybe I can't sleep because my sister Joannie is getting married in a few weeks. Whoa.