Attendance for the L.A. Angels at the Cleveland Indians, April 11 @ Miller Park in Milwaukee:
Attendance for the Indiana Pacers at the Milwaukee Bucks, April 11 @ the Bradley Center in Milwaukee:
Attendance for the Milwaukee Brewers at the Florida Marlins, Aprill 11 @ Dolphins Stadium in Miami:
So I was thinking about how much I hate it when people here in WI bitch about winter, cold, short springs, etc., when they’ve lived here for many, many, many years. You’ve been here, you know about what to expect, if you don’t like it, then do one of two things:
– Move to someplace where you fucking like the weather
– Bitch to somebody who gives a shit
– Just shut the hell up all together
(My preference is for 1 or 3).
But then I was thinking about it some more, I think this peeve is actually a derivative of my abhorrence of small talk in general. Because if you think about it, why do people complain about weather? Because our experience of the weather is something that everyone shares, and so you can have a conversation about it with absolutely anyone who speaks the same language.
But at the same time, I don’t see why we have to complain to one another about the weather when there’s not a lot you can do about it, and since we all have experienced it already, you’re not gonna blow me away with some facinating new insight about weather.
“Did you notice how warm it is out there today?”
“Why no– my dermal layer has recently and mysteriously lost the ability to process external sensory input through nerve endings and relay that information to my brain. I’m sure you can imagine this really complicates processes like driving, holding a fork, and protecting myself from injury. But in addition to all that, it makes me thoroughly and genuinely interested in your experience of atmospheric temperature.
“What? No, I didn’t notice that my elbow is bleeding profusely. Thanks for pointing that out…”
If you know me, you know that I often have times where I don’t have lots to say, particularly to strangers, in large part just because I don’t enjoy/see the point of talking for the singular purpose of filling up silence.
How’s your day?
First of all, I need to mention that THE NORDIC MOUNTAIN PEOPLE FOUND MY DAMN CAR KEY. HOLY LIVING CRAP. With that in mind, Michelle and I may make another run over there on Sunday if the weather’s OK. You wanna go?
Anyway, then last week I was listening the Brewers in spring training, and getting excited about the new baseball season, and I let my temptations get the best of me– I dug out my copy of the last MLB baseball game that EA Sports released (MVP Baseball 2005), which is not a particularly fantastic game, but it does let one run a “franchise” for up to 150 years, so I played the game this week. I played it too much, as usual (with the sports games in particular).
But, I had my fun, and now I’ve returned the CDs to my drawer at work, and it’s back to business at the homestead. Michelle is “staying in” this evening since she has to be up early for a cheer competition tomorrow, and that suits me just fine, since I was thinking of staying at home tonight anyway. Here’s my list of things I want or need to get done on Friday night:
– clean up all laundry
– clean up all dishes
– pick up the junk laying around the living room
– sort out/through ski clothing
– watch and return the current Netflixs
– scan in and shred some bills from the last month or so
– devise a plan for the balance of the weekend
There is a Bucks game on Saturday, and I haven’t been to the BC for one of those in almost 2 years. Is that right? I should ask Schneider, he’s great with calendars…
Oh, one other thing I think I’ll do, just to practice the technique, is to straight-euro-lace another pair or two of my shoes. It was the first hit on the Googles, so not a major “find” by any means, but I think this page is pretty neat. What are you doing with the Internet that’s useful or cool?
Finally, soloshootsfirst made me change my password today for the first time. Who knew? I hope I remember the new one…
Well, I suppose any accident is preventable, right? That would be the nature of an “accident,” wouldn’t you say? If someone could see it coming, then there would be a plan to prevent it.
Anyway…
Last night, I must have whacked a glass of water off my nightstand in my sleep. Most of it went in a shoe. Some of it went in my laptop, which I had set on the floor after I decided to go to sleep. I haven’t completed the troubleshooting and diagnosis of the resulting issues, but odds seem good that the lappy is boned. That is, screwed. I.E., “got a sleeper booked on the F-train.”
I’ve broken my fair share of laptops in my time, and while each incident caused me to hate myself a little bit, I have to admit that I’ve learned something from each of them. Here is a short list:
– Be very careful when drinking ANYTHING around your computer.
– Your laptop is not an old-timey console radio; hitting it will not help.
– The shock protection was tested at the factory. It’s not designed for home-testing.
– If you put your laptop on the floor, be awake the whole time it’s there. Otherwise, find a table, desk, or countertop.
– Keep unattended liquids away from ALL of your electronic devices.
So that’s where I’m at. I’m sure Mundschau is willing to help me out to be sure the lappy is indeed (once again) toast, but it’s depressing either way.
Car accidents are also easier to prevent is you exercise a lot of caution, so it remains to be seen whether or not Michelle and I will make it up north today. My gut tell me that we’ll probably be OK, since Hwy 45 is a major thoroughfare all the way up. Maybe an alternative would be to take Hwy 10 straight over to 51; you think that might be plowed better? Hmm…
Enjoy your weekend; I’ll try to post something from the Northwoods.
On the surface, it might seem like I just don’t have the motivation to become part of a “movement.” For a while, I self-diagnosed that as a problem, but lately I’ve changed my mind and decided that I’m simply calm and sensible about most things. If a person has an idea or a philosophy that they really believe in, there’s a chance it could consume them, and in turn, consume all their interpersonal interactions with the other humans.
I came up with a short list of things I really feel like I’m on-board with, but I try to make a point of NOT shouting from the rooftops about it…
(My apologies for the vast diversity of such a short list.)
Abortion
Let’s kick it off with the mother of all philosophical debates! I am not personally a proponent of abortion. I think it’s the wrong choice to make, and I hope that anyone considering such a procedure thinks long and hard about the future consequences, and moreover, talks to a professional about it. The idea of me being the parent of an aborted fetus actually makes me feel physically ill. It just *feels* wrong.
However, I understand that there are people who don’t feel the same way, abortion IS legal, and even if it weren’t, there would be women getting them somewhere. The way I reason it is: tell people what you think, if someone asks, discourage them from doing it, but leave the final judgement up to God.
Climate Change
I have had a more vocal, tongue-in-cheek debate ongoing on this topic with Dave Slotten for a while. But honestly, it seems really cut-and-dried for me: actual scientists, who enjoy “doing science,” have done actual science that says, “holy BALLS is it hot! It is going to get hotter and hotter and hotter because of these things that humankind is doing.”
I’m not looking to debate research here, or the capability of scientists to read the past and predict the future. The thing is, there’s no doubt that we’re doing things that are bad for the planet, and whether or not you want to believe there is a disaster looming, my reasonable brain says, “if there are more environmentally-friendly ways to accomplish the same things, what’s the harm in doing them?” If you’re not sure about the climate change thing, or don’t think you can trust scientists or lobbyists or former vice presidents, there’s still no harm in doing things that are good for preserving the planet. Right?
Al Gore did send me an email today, and I welcome you to take a look if you like.
3rd Parties and Term Limits
I am not ever going to write a song about Ralph Nader or move to Europe because I think they do democracy better over there.
It just seems to make sense that people should listen to as many voices as possible before making a choice about who is going to govern. If one of two parties has let you down repeatedly, and they don’t seem all too different anyway, it’s time to try something new. Kind of like if the lightbulb in your bedroom is flicking on and off, get off your ass, climb up on a chair, and screw it in a little tighter. Why put up with an aggrevating situation because you’re lazy?
That idea naturally leads me to the concept of involving more people in government by limiting the amount of time one person can serve. I say go to the max– one term per office per person. Can you imagine what might actually get done if a politician didn’t have to think about getting re-elected?
Linux and open-source software
This is obviously the least essential my logic-crusades, but it comes to mind in part thanks to Wil Wheaton, and in part because I’ve been using a Linux OS more and had contact with the meta-geek crazies on the extreme of that argument.
Look– the goal of a free software movement should not be to topple successful companies or do some sort of mass-conversion of the world’s computer users. The goal should be to offer people a choice. If someone says, “Damn, this software is expensive and doesn’t even do what I want!” there should be a reasonable person that communicates well to say, “You could think about trying this. It does all the same sort of stuff and you can get it for as little as zero monies.”
So that’s enough soapboxing for one day. In the end, I wish reasonable people could have reasonable discussions about things that they’ve thought about, instead of shouting matches across news reports or Internets that only make people angry. I guess a lot of reasonable people just don’t want to get all riled up about it.
Realized that I had a variety of “briefs” after making my initial post…
1. This Anna Nicole Smith thing is going to be an interesting movie on HBO or something in a few years. Who do you think they’ll cast for the title role?
2. I didn’t even think about how I didn’t think about missing ’24’ this week until I scanned through the titles of my last few posts. Yeah, not gonna miss that show at all.
3. I got an LCD monitor for my desktop that might just make the desktop PC my favorite computer again…
4. Four Best Picture nominees down, 1 to go. I still think The Departed is your front-runner.
5. Shoveling blows.
6. Pitchers and catchers report to camp in 3 days.
7. Still haven’t started that “get up early more often” thing yet.
I was reading a post from Lifehacker this morning, and while some of the linked tips therein have a greater application to people who are a lot busier during their days than I generally am, the idea of getting up early and having a productive morning made me think back to living in Bozeman.
Particularly in the spring of that year, even though I had no job and no place to be other than class twice a week in the evening, I tried very hard to get myself to bed at 10 every night, and I got up around 5 every morning. I remember feeling really good about waking up, and there’s no doubt that I felt more creative and productive when I got a jump on things.
I’m thinking that I might have time for more interesting blogging first thing in the AM (shrugs). It’s worth a shot anyway, so I’ll try to keep you up to date and let you know how it goes…
Couple Misc. Notes:
– Super Bowl was pretty lame. It was interesting through the first half, but the Bears D really wore down as the game went on (prolly had something to do with the fact the offense couldn’t stay on the field– I’m looking at you, Rex). Joe and April came over, though, and we had Randy Balls, pizza, and grilled cheese sam’iches.
– I helped Michelle file her taxes, but I screwed something up and she’s actually due another 160 bucks or so. We’ll have to put through an amendment.
– Michelle really likes the idea of being able to easily share you camera-phone pics on the web, so she set herself up a Flickr acct yesterday, too. Only a couple pics so far, but watch for more: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuck2thefloor
This has been a relatively silent week, so this terse entry may not be very satisfying, but it is what it is.
1) The first week of the semester has been blissfully steady, not overwhelming. We’re going to start processing next year soon, so things will change.
2) I cleaned up my apartment. It’s awesomely good. This is officially the first time the whole place (from the garage to the first floor to the bedroom) is tidy and “put away.” I feel as though I can do other stuff.
3) Filed my taxes, and I’m getting a smaller percentage of my withholdings back than ever!! But it’ll still be nice to use the refund to pay some stuff back…
Perhaps more to come; I’ve also got a week and half of news to catch up on. How’ve you been?
1. For a “back to work” sort of day, I sure posted enough in the blog.
2. Just realized that there is a whole segment of my every-Tuesday-work tasks that I completely flaked on today. Oops.
3. I wonder if I apply for a new job, will they google me and find this page? Doubtful– there is another Jason Bock that is far more Googlful that I am…
4. I probably shouldn’t just drink this bottle of wine…
5. On with my list, this is it…
1. Got busted at work this morning for running BitTorrent. This woman from Networking who was no younger than 55 went into a detailed explanation of how much bandwidth I was using and what the repercussions are for the network at-large. All she really needed to say was, “Hey– stop using BitTorrent. Now.” In any case, my thought was, “if they don’t want us using this, why don’t they just block the ports..?”
2. Oscar Noms are out. I’ve made it a ritual in recent years to at least see all the candidates for Best Pic, so when I bitch about who won, I feel like I have a good reason. I’ve also expanded that to trying to see as many of the director and screenplay nominees as I can, too. Here, in no particular order, are a list of flicks I’ll have to catch in the next few weeks with that in mind:
– Babel
– Blood Diamond
– The Pursuit of Happyness
– The Last King of Scotland
– Half Nelson
– Dreamgirls
– Letters from Iwo Jima
– The Prestige
– The Illusionist
– The Queen
– Pan’s Labyrinth
– Little Children
That is all…