Author Archives: Mark

While travelling to and from Thailand, you find yourself trapped in a metal tube a few thousand feet above the ground with not a lot to do. I had a book to read, but United Airlines did show some decent movies in the good ‘ol economy cabin. I’m not a movie critic, so I’ll just give a thumbs up or thumbs down.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
Thumbs up. Fun movie. The added content over and above the original 6 page childrens book was done very well. Liked it. Thumbs Up.

Up In the Air
Good movie. Watching a movie about a person (Clooney) who flys all the time while flying may have enhanced the experience. Thumbs Up.

Whip It
This movie was just plain fun. Watch it. Ellen Paige is great. Double thumbs up.

Blind Side
Another great movie. I think it won awards. It’s worth it. Sandra Bullock does fantastic in her role which is NOT a romantic comedy. Fantastic. Double Thumbs Up.

Love Happens
Lame. Wish I spent the time reading my book. Thumbs Down.

Invention of Lying
Ricky Gervaise is just plain fun. He was a bit better in “Ghost Town”, but this was still fun. Thumbs Up.

Ding Ding Ding, the starting bell has rung for… PhD Entry Exams!

Let the PhD Commence!
Kate has submitted a proposal. Written Exams commence… NOW… and oral exams commence next week. Katy is going to be extremely busy.

Good luck Katy, you are totally going to kick ass.

This means for the next two-ish weeks, I am your blogger-extraordinaire. I suspect that when Katy does take a break it will be to do a quick tweet (click to check up on her).

To our faithful readers, you can expect picture-deficient blog entries about off-topic rubbish. Me? Blog? My magic 8-ball says “outlook poor”. Let’s give it a try anyway…

Cooking! (book review)
I have been a little burned out on cooking lately. I kept making the same meals over and over. When asked to make a menu, I’d get just a little bit depressed as I thought about what protein I was going to pair with what carb plus a veggie… Blah. So, at Katy’s suggestion, I bought a couple new cookbooks. One for the new pressure cooker as well as one from a PBS show I always liked called “America’s Test Kitchen”. Each recipe is made many times in there test kitchen: tweaking the ingredient list, amounts, and procedures until they have a tasty recipe which is quite repeatable.

In this book you will notice that there are few recipes, but those recipes are bulletproof and fully explained.

For example: Last night I made their Pad Thai and the directions to make perfect rice noodles were spot on. My rice noodles were not a sticky clump!
Hooray! I’m excited about cooking again!

Sports! (but not basketball)
In February, Katy picked up a couple soccer jerseys for me on her way back from Jerusalem and I thought that if I was going to wear them out in public, I had better watch a few games. And to my surprise, after watching a single UEFA Champions League match, I really liked it. And, I figured out why I never liked it before. You have to REALLY pay attention. When I watched with unblinking focus, I was getting nervous/excited as the ball got within striking range of either goal. If I allowed myself to be a little distracted and read some stats on my laptop, it didn’t even phase me when I’d see the goalie carrying the ball away from another saved shot. What was the final score of the match where I discovered that I liked to watch soccer? 1-1.

Go Man U!

Yesterday was a heart breaker when Porto scored in the final minutes to tie the score 2-2. As that was a home game for Manchester United, it puts them in a must-win situation for the second leg of the quarterfinals (4/15/2009 Man U vs Porto)

Games? sort of…
I’m also taking a shot at playing Dungeons and Dragons after a 20-year hiatus (you can blame my brother for that). This may be the last mention of it on the blog.

My feelings on Taxes… (click on image)

My only regret is that the clip does not have “Quick! Get the hobbling post!”

So, I finished. Hooray. Sunday is completely gone. I deserve fruit pie. Liv, put on your walking collar, we are gonna hoof it over to the supermarket and get Daddy some sweet treats.

So, my wife is away for 2-ish weeks and I get a full run of the house with a sidenote that it needs to look respectable when she arrives next Saturday.
What does a married guy do when left to his own means for more than two weeks

Eat Food…

Watch an extra dog for a few days (Izzy got to go to work with Liv)

More Holiday Gifts… some wicked strong coffee…

Break the PS3 Rock Band Guitar because I rock THAT much.

My whammy bar went limp :(

Tiny springs make Mark ANGRY!

Endeavor to fix it.

I chose a random retired (though functional) household electronic which has moving parts in the theory that it could have a similar tiny little spring. I was right on my first guess. Sorry CD/Clock/Radio alarm, you served us well but Rock and Roll needs your parts.

The Patient.	The Victim… um… donor
Broken and Donor springs	FIXED!

On Saturday, Katy and I went up into Rocky Mountain National Park and did some snowshoeing up to Loch Vale. It was … delightful. I hiked the whole thing in two layers of t-shirt, while carrying many pounds of arctic-worthy gear in my pack (that I used a little at the Loch)

On Sunday the air temps plummeted and inhaling (air) deeply made me cough.

This morning, Mon, my morning dog walk was at -15 degrees F. Thanks Canada for the gift of showing me how much of a wuss I am. Even my dog can’t seem to do more than short walks without picking up her feet and looking at me with a very accusing look as if I forced her to walk. She has never found a set of dog booties that she couldn’t kick off in under 5 minutes. There is exciting news on that front, a coworker has a “bootie retrieval system” composed of an X of elastic cord which is tied to each booty and the X lays (stretches) across the dog’s back. Liv took it for a test drive and it worked. You can expect some hilarious video once I get a similar system rigged.

We don’t post political stuff here, and I’m going to do my best to keep it that way. Please follow the links to let your congressional representative know how you feel about their recent vote on the financial bailout package. In Stephen Colbert’s words, the brink of financial meltdown is getting “brinkier”.

Visit this page at Colorado.gov to contact your rep (or see a map of the districts and find how who represents you).

I heard on the radio that some reps are getting 100 to 1 feedback against the plan and as of Fri-Sat, the Zogby polling numbers show 46% to 46% at the National level. Those numbers don’t jive.

So, on release day (two weeks ago?) I bought the PC game Spore. For those not following PC games, this is a game where you start out as a single-celled organism and evolve your creature until it grows legs, forms a tribe, builds cities and then ventures out into the galaxy. It also has an internet community component where you can encounter other players’ creations while you play the game. But don’t start imagining yourself as the ultimate core wars player whose organism will crush other players worldwide. What you do see other creatures/buildings/vehicles as a flavor element which you then crush/befriend on their way to galactic dominance.

It received so much hype that I had to try it and find out for myself. Does it stand up to all the hype? No, of course not. Is it fun… yes. I’m a huge fan of all the Civilization style games and galactic exploration/conquest so this is right up my ally. I think this review is fair where they describe it as the ultimate casual game.

I bought some more bicycling clothes so that I could attempt to get in two rides per week without creating a constant need to do laundry. I’ve got new shorts, new socks, … I was psyched up to give them a try today. I rode “Pink Lightning” (my ’80s Schwinn Super Sport racer) and as I rounded the first round-a-bout, I was starting to wonder if I was doing something really dumb. I’ve never really ridden on a cold day and wasn’t sure how much internal heat I could rely on to get me through the 40 minute ride.

My fingerless gloves were woefully inadequate and I found myself jamming my hands in my armpits at every stoplight. My thoroughly vented shoes are way too summery and left me arriving at work with numb toes that tingled until I got in a hot shower. One layer of spandex shorts did suffice and my exposed legs were A-OK. I checked some of the local weather stations ( sweet weather site – weatherunderground ) and found that it was about 42 degrees. WHERE DID SUMMER GO?

If you want to track my bicycle commutes you can follow along at mycyclinglog.com.

And concerning computer games: “Spore” releases this week (Sept 7)!