Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

Every now and then I realize that my little weblog of Mike’s wierd stuff could be so much more.
I mean, I post some personal stuff here, but I never forget there are people out there reading every word. The mental firewall of what to post remains in place to filter out things.
Thanks to Escribitionist, I read a post that Sour Bob wrote. Holy fuck, that’s some real stuff. If it’s not real and he’s faking it, then he’s a great damn writer.

Yea-haw!
The new Charlie’s Angels Trailer is out and Bernie Mac is playing Bosley!
All hail Drew Barrymore, she again is producing the movie.

Our group of friends got together yesterday for the annual pumpkin carving party. This year we also made ‘Spooky Houses’. The spooky houses are basically mini-gingerbread houses. It gives the kids an excuse to stick candy to edible houses with frosting. They loved it. Many thanks to the Diggs for hosting the shebang, to Colleen for all the prep work on the houses, and to Len & Monique for bringing the booze.

Earlier in the morning, I tried using the new skillet. It sure gets hot. Once it gets hot, it stays hot. IT will take some getting used to before I stop making so much smoke in the house. I made goetta and it turned out OK, but the smoke was much more than normal.
After the pumpkin party, I went to a bar meeting of people who visit the WWDN site. It’s not the first time I’ve meet people in RL that I had known first online, so I wasn’t too nervous. It was a little strange to walk into the part of the bar where everyone was and have people recognize me that I had never meet before.
I was a bit of a hit since I brought a laptop with internet access to the bar. I was able to upload a couple of pics from the bar and let everyone post to & read from the message board while sitting there drinking beer. After a bit of getting to know who’s who, I was soon involved in my normal conversations about linux, video games, geocaching, and other nerdly pursuits. I stayed out of the hardcore Star Trek & Ren Faire discussions. Since most of us knew a little about each other, it made the conversation a lot easier than if it was 20 strangers with nothing in common in the room. A little later, Martin showed up to have a few beers and he got sucked into the geocaching discussions as well.
Today, my mother-in-law arrives in town for a week. It should be a good time. She and I get along well, and Michele will be on yet another quilting trip this week. We kind of have a mutual agreement that she can spoil the children while she’s here, as long as they get to school and bed on time.
Lastly, I was reading MeFi and saw a Slate story about the stain-free pants from Lee. You know the commercail where the daughter-in-law spills red wine on her pants to shock her mother-in-law. It appears that the pants really do reply and prevent stains. The writer made a good attempt to stain the pants and simply could not do it. I think a pair are in my future. The strange thing about the MeFi thread was the large amount of cyncism over the positive report. Accusations of the story being paid for by Lee and being a puff piece struck me as a bit over the top. Are people really so cynical that good news must always be seen as a trick?
Lastly, the Angels won Game 6. On my way to the bar I stopped a supermarket to get some cash from the ATM. Inside the store was a TV set. Around the TV were 30+ people watching the game together. Complete strangers were chatting about the game and enjoying the group feeling. It was the biggest outpouring of spontaneous community I have seen in a while. Kinda neat. I guess you had to be there…
OK, I gotta hit the shower to get clean or Michele is going to get pissed.

As I type, my new Lodge 10″ cast iron skillet is seasoning in the oven.
I am baking in some oil into the cast iron as directed my my cooking guru, Alton Brown.
Tomorrow, I hope to use the skillet in some glorious cooking adventure.

In a moment of brilliance, I posted some comments on the Styrofoamkitty weblog.
The post was about men liking women being aloof. My thoughts in regards to male/female relationships were so good, I felt the need to share here.
Guys hate that aloof stuff. It’s way too complicated.
Guys like straight forward stuff without a lot of middle ground.
For example, all things in life can be categorized into one of two realms. Either something sucks, or it rules. There is no in between.
To put it in relationship terms, the guy wants to know if you want to date him or don’t. This aloof stuff is way too confusing for our tiny brains.

For the good of baseball, Bud Selig must go.
This is beyond the pale.

I finally took a few minutes to make the site more readable via non-IE browers. I put the main part in a clearly defined table instead of purse CSS and the site looks identical under both IE & Mozilla under WinXP. The right column shows up all the time now.
If you still have viewing problems, let me know.

Last Sunday I went Geocaching with Martin. I finally got the story written up.
Enjoy the story of Geocache 17.
Also in catch-up mode is this photo:

I’m back home now. I went with Michele to drop Mira off at nursery school. I was getting a little stir crazy and wanted to get out. I’m not sure if it was Michele’s driving or my breakfast of rye toast and tea, but I’m feeling a little queasy.
I stopped taking the Vicodin this morning. I’m just going to take Tylenol now. The Vicodin just makes me too loopy.
I hear some of my peeps are having trouble with Trillian and Yahoo IM. I was trying to chat with Casey last night and everytime he sent me a message, it was crash my instance of Trilllian. There is a patch here that appears to fix the problem. I pray for an end to the Great IM Wars.
Sitting here on the couch I caught and episode with Cory Doctrow talking about several interesting bills in congress about consumers rights that basically repeal parts of the DCMA. You can check it out here.
That’s it for now. I think I’m going to roll over and take a nap. It’s almost 9:30 and I’m tired.

It’s Thursday night and I’m still awake. I’ve slept more in the last two days than in the last month. My internal clock is fuxxored.
Michele cooked up some homemade matzo ball soap today. Delicious! I’ve only eaten soup for the last few days due to my sore throat and the Matzo Ball soup was a treat. Sitting at the table with the girls for dinner was a nice break from sitting on the couch all day.
Oh yes, FUCK Delta Airlines. Due to my throat, I can’t fly to New York for my Alumni Weekend. It is quite a disappointment. I called Delta to tell them I couldn’t make the flight. They said I could postone the exact flight up to a year from when I made the reservation. This doesn’t work since I made the reservation in Sept. and Alumni Weekend ’03 will be in Oct. She siad I could turn my ticket back into frequent fliers miles. Sounds great, right? Then she said I had to pay $100 for the priviledge of not flying on Delta. So it was either pay $100 or lose a frequent flyer flight. Bastards. Go bankrupt on your stupid as fees and nonsensical fare system. I hope Southwest ends up running your stupid asses into a Chapter 11.
On a lighter note, I watched two movies today. I watched The Hidden Fortress and The Last Castle. The Hidden Fortress is one of the Kurosawa films that I haven’t seen. I had heard that Lucas based some of Star Wars on the film. I could see a few ideas, but overall it’s quite a different story. I do think the idea of the lightsaber duel does come from this film. I enjoyed the film, but like many subtitled films, you need to be paying a lot of attention to avoid missing anything. I have to rewind a couple times to catch what was going on. The second film, The Last Castle was good, but not great. Imagine Braveheart taking place inside a prison. The film is well acted but some of the scenes telegraph the plot way in advance.
The rest of the day was filled with weak daytime TV and naps.
Here’s the Friday Five for your amusement:
1. How many TVs do you have in your home?
Two. The 27″ in the front room and the 13″ in the bedroom.
2. On average, how much TV do you watch in a week?
Maybe an hour per weekday and perhaps 2-3 hours per weekend day, depending on what sports are on.
3. Do you feel that television is bad for young children?
Nope. There are television programs that are wrong, but television in itsself isn’t bad.
4. What TV shows do you absolutely HAVE to watch, and if you miss them, you’re heartbroken?
I’m not really heartbroken over TV shows. I don’t like to miss the Sopranos or Good Eats, but if they spend a couple days on the Tivo, it’s no big deal.
5. If you had the power to create your own television network, what would your line-up look like?
Hrrm. Junkyard Wars, Insomniac, Jeremiah, Sopranos, The Wire, Good Eats, Call for Help, Antique Roadshow, The Daily Show.