Working On a Coupla TwoThree Things

I had a breakthrough yesterday in realizing that I was sending posts via email is not that difficult.  I was just not completing the process.  I can now pull in those emails pretty quickly.

The ones that I’ve grabbed, though, don’t seem to display correctly once they’re here.  I get titles that reflect the subject line, but the body itself is always empty.  I’m going to head out to the forums next to take a look at that.

Why I am blogging at 12:40am, you ask?  Just couldn’t get to sleep.  I was lying awake in bed about an hour before I decided that I would grab the laptop and see if that would make me tired.  It only seems to have made me thirsty, which doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Well… Schlemiel, Schlimazel.

Schlitz bottlePicked up an article from the Journal-Sentinel yesterday about how Schlitz is going back to the original formula, in bottles only.

A little excerpt from that article:

Despite the renewed focus on aging boomers, Schlitz might also find new fans among drinkers in their 20s, Schumacher said. He cited Pabst Blue Ribbon, another old-time brand that has enjoyed a revival in recent years from young drinkers drawn by its retro appeal – and lack of a big ad campaign.

“They might get some young hipsters” to drink Schlitz, Schumacher said, “just because of the irony of it.”

No, they “might” not– I GUARANTEE you that’s what will happen.

Dorks In Short Supply

You know you’re living a sad little dork-life when you make exceptionally dorky jokes to yourself, like this one:

Uncharacteristically thick envelope that you’re not expecting shows up on your desk while you’re out to lunch.  You pick it up, look at it, and say to yourself, “Venice, Italy.”

Lucky for me, though, I have the blog.

Still More Room to Get Crazier

Latest word from the Energy Information Administration is that gas will peak around $3.60 in June.  As the linked article mentions, there are plenty of folks who think it’s looney to imagine the price will stop there.

This, combined with the spiraling cost of… well, everything, further galvanizes my mindset to be “I’ve got to get rid of this petrol-guzzling monstrosity ASAP.”  Now, those of you who’ve seen what I drive may think that I’M nuts, but remember that I drove the Festiva for all those years, and I was spoiled by its fantastic fuel economy.

I’ve mentioned to a number of people that I’ve read rumors about a Honda subcompact hybrid that is apparently still in the cards for the 2009 model year.  Granted, I don’t really follow the “news” about the auto industry that closely, but until I see a picture and a photo and a MSRP for this vehicle I’m not going to bank on it.  Something priced in the range they’re talking about got me to thinking about a math problem, though– feel free to take a stab at your leisure:

If I were to buy a new car that averaged 60 miles per gallon (versus my current average of 30) at a net cost of about $5,000.00, how long would it take the savings in fuel to offset the purchase price, if I drive the car 15,000 miles a year?

So that’s something I’ve got on the brain.

Home Opener Recap

It was a nice opening day overall.  Aside from the fact that we beat their ass, it was a good pre- and post-game outing.  If you didn’t have a chance to keep up throughout Friday, the pictures that I sent to Flickr periodically are, of course, still there.

Was there ever a mob of people, though!  I didn’t check– was it a bigger crowd than last year?  I assume so, just due to the media talking about it being the 3rd largest crowd ever at Miller Park, etc.  That was the one thing I could do without, and I might even think about handling the opener a little differently next year– there are SOOOOO many people at that park on the first day, and ones that won’t show up to another baseball game all year.  They’re there for the party only, and sure, that’s totally fine, but for someone like me who goes because I enjoy the game first and foremost, it gets a little bit nuts.

I stood in line to pee during the pre-game tailgate for something like 20 minutes.  There were plenty of folks there that weren’t willing to wait that long (they just peed next to their cars).  I think my last Flickr shot sort of says it all about the condition of the parking lot afterwards– it was like being in a paved garbage dump.  I really felt sorry for the folks that had to come in there and clean that place up in time for an afternoon game today.

So, I dunno, y’know?  Like I said, I understand that the home opener is always going to be a big party, but maybe for me, who is going to go to 15 or 20 games during the year regardless, what’s the diff if I’m at the first one?  I’ll probably change my mind by this time next year, but this is certainly the first time I’ve ever considered it.

Milwaukee Opener..!

Headed out the door shortly to get started on the opening day festivities– Schrubbe came down last night, and we’re going to run to the grocery store before braving the traffic mess.

Looking forward to a good game.  The Brewers are a lot better than San Fran on paper, so I think the day should end happily for the hometown crowd.  I’ll try to send up some photos throughout the day onto the Flickrs, so keep an eye out if you’re bored at work.
I would be able to blog from my seat if the fracking “post-via-email” thing would work right.  I might dick with that a little bit over the weekend.

Catch you after the game!

An All-Too-Rare Occurance

I was thinking about the difference between the real world and a virtual one, like the online game “2nd Life“. I thought about how one might look at the “life” in the game to be a sort of cheating– for example, if your avatar could (relatively) quickly and easily gain a set of skills that you don’t have in real life, just by interacting with your PC. Maybe you can easily learn how to play the guitar in 2nd Life, even if you don’t in your real life.

This got me to thinking about the nature of knowledge and the act of creating it. If you think of knowledge as something with a static existence– a thing that does not necessarily require a human brain to possess it, but more just in terms of the electrical impulses and combinations of proteins that create thought– those things should, theoretically, be able to be extracted and contained in some other sort of medium. Right?

So, if knowledge exists, then teaching and learning is (again, theoretically) a big waste of time, because you’re re-creating knowledge that has already been created before. If you could keep a store of that knowledge, and just “upload” it into a person’s consciousness, you’d think we could advance as a species a lot faster, because everyone would start with the sum total of human knowledge that exists at the moment they receive the upload.

Even better, what if (scary-Borg-stuff) knowledge could be disseminated not as a “file” that gets posted into a person’s brain, but what if we networked everyone’s brains together? If we had on-demand access to all the knowledge that is being created all the time? Think how quickly we would advance THEN.

This is somewhat like the shit that’s in my very-hard-to-read book about The Singularity. That Kurtzweil is one brainy mofo.

Additionally:

Uploaded some more photos today.  I now have a galleries for Oshkosh, Eagle River, and Milwaukee, as well as for a few of the vacations I’ve taken in the last few years.  Take a look as you will.

Michelle and I were talking about it recently– I don’t think I ever actually put photos from our Glacier Nat’l Park trip on the web last summer.  I’m gonna work on those next, be watching for it in a few days…

In other breaking news this evening, I guess Tom Crean is leaving Marquette.  How bout them apples?