Random Thoughts 8/29/12

• I made it through my fantasy football draft, both as a player and as a commissioner.  As a player, I was drafting ninth out of ten and wasn't lucky enough to have anyone special fall to me at the ninth slot.  That said, I felt like I drafted really well through the middle and late rounds, with three or four players falling to me well below their average draft position (good value for me!).
• As a commissioner, we changed venue for the first time in five years, going from Dave & Buster's to Great Wolf Lodge.  GWL gave us full run of half of their restaurant and lots of extra perks, including free mini-golf and discounted access to their water park.  I thought the food was great and the actual set up of tables (we run three simultaneous drafts for our three conferences) was much better than I expected.  Thank you Great Wolf Lodge!
• Here's an awesome list of the most disappointing movies of all time.  It's mostly sequels that have let us down and failed to live up to expectations but there are a few originals in the mix here too, based on the hype that preceded the film or the expectations from the source material, e.g. bad movies adapted from great books.
• Artur Davis, Mia Love, and Nikki Haley all gave great speeches last night at the Republican convention.  I liked what Ann Romney and Chris Christie did, but neither one of them wowed me.  In fact, Christie disappointed me a little because he was so focused on himself and wasn't the firebrand.  I missed both Santorum and Walker.
• Susana Martinez gave a great speech tonight (she was the first speech I heard in its entirety after getting home from church).  I'm listening to Paul Ryan now…  he's got some great lines that I'm really enjoying.  Go Paul Ryan!
• We're studying the Sermon on the Mount right now in Bible study on Wednesday nights.
• I'm getting a second opinion on my ankle tomorrow.  Maybe some answers…

Random Thoughts 8/24/12

The sincerest form of flattery…

• So much for that MRI; I knew this couldn't be so easy.  Insurance decided against paying for it, so I decided against doing it.  It's very frustrating not knowing the specifics of why this ankle never healed properly.  Oh, well.
• The verdict is in: a jury has found that Samsung blatantly ripped off Apple's designs for things like the iPhone.  It's not a huge surprise; some companies don't even try to innovate.  They just copy.  Now it cost them $1 billion.
• Kummerspeck.  From the German, meaning excess weight that you gain from emotional overeating. It literally means "stress bacon."  That's an awesome word.
• Watch Orson Welles talk about the con-artistry of fortune tellers and what's called a "cold reading."
• Also did you notice how much Orson Welles in the 1970's (without facial hair) looks like Rush Limbaugh today?  Wow!  Must be a radio thing.
• I'm wanting to watch that 2016 movie about President Obama.  It sounds a lot like the 2004 pre-election documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, but this time with actual truth added in.  I have Dinesh D'Souza's book on my Amazon wishlist and just haven't gotten around to getting it yet; watching a movie would be a bit easier to fit into my schedule.
• Fantasy football draft in three days.  I'm not ready!
• Here are clues to the third season of "Sherlock."  Hopefully PBS doesn't give us the chopped up and shaved down version to fit in more commercials version this time.
• How do you know you're not a very good politician?  When you find yourself apologizing for your position on rape.  Wow.  Claire McCaskill must have sold her soul to the devil (again).
• By the way, Todd Akin may be a good person and a good conservative but a good politician wouldn't be so clumsy and tone deaf and a good citizen would get out of the way and let another conservative take that crucial Senate seat.  If this had happened a month ago, he wouldn't be on the ticket in the first place.  His only hope is that 80 days from now, no one will remember or care (which, believe it or not, is possible).

Random Thoughts 8/21/12

• I went to the doctor today about that ankle I hurt last year.  I've been having lots of problems with it for several months now; I might have broken it, might have torn something, we don't really know what's wrong yet.  I had X-rays today that didn't show anything obvious and we've scheduled an MRI that might clear things up.  
• Incoming KU freshman Milt Doyle, a highly touted guard from Chicago, has left the team and won't be attending Kansas this fall.  Coach Self was very gracious in interviews about the departure but the truth is that the Doyle was buried so deep in the depth chart that the coaches probably asked him to redshirt.  Instead, he chose to leave.
• Doyle's departure probably means walk-on Justin Wesley will receive a scholarship again this year.
• My blood pressure this morning, in spite of having five kids: 128/78.  Nailed it!
• Fantasy football starts next week with our draft on Monday night!  Yay!
• Great quote: "Mitt Romney, when he's nominated, will be the most experienced executive to be nominated since Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952, who ran a university and the Allied war effort."  That would be a nice change.
• Last week a writer shocked the world with an article in which she argues that her mother should have aborted her.  Specifically, she says, "I wish I'd been aborted," and supports that argument by detailing her abuse and the poverty her family endured.  This article, however, does a great job of analyzing her article and showing why her argument is actually anti-choice because it insists on abortion in these cases.
• Read the original character descriptions for the show "Friends."
• This is officially the last season of "The Office."  Unfortunately it's at least a year too late for a once great show.

Watermelon Technical Video

I don't care what you say, this is comedy at its driest funniest.

Guh-ood Lookin'

So I showed my wife who Vice-Presidential candidate Paul Ryan was.  Big mistake.

Previously I'd described his role in congress and the house budget committee and his various positions on issues that were important to us and she gave me kind of a ho-hum response.  Then the next day I paused the television when he appeared on the news…

"Hey, sweetheart, that guy right there is Paul Ry…"

"Whoa!  He's good lookin'!"

She emphatically (and unnecessarily) pronounced both o's in the word "good."

"Well, I don't know about that.  His policies though…"

"And Romney's good looking, too!"

At this point, I'm wondering if at some point in the last four years I might have accidentally hinted that Sarah Palin was perhaps slightly more attractive than a troll.

My wife adds, "It's not that it should matter, but people are shallow, and these guys are rrrrrrreally handsome.  They look fantastic.  I'm really excited about this election now!"

Wow.

Random Thoughts 8/14/12

• Wednesday Family Night, our Wednesday night church program, begins tomorrow.  I'm continuing to teach from the harmonized life of Christ and lasagna is on the menu for tomorrow.  Dinner at 6, classes, worship practice, et al. at 7pm.
• Did you notice that former Jayhawk Sasha Kaun won a bronze medal as part of the Russian Olympic basketball team?
• The Jayhawks won two exhibition games in Switzerland last week and then lost two in France, including one where Coach Self didn't play the upperclassmen at all.  Interestingly, in that loss, freshman Perry Ellis, who didn't even start, lead the team with a double-double (16 points and 12 rebounds), four for four from the free throw line, and he had a steal.  Everybody else looked pretty mediocre against the professional French team that included an actual NBA player.
• Paul Ryan.  Yes.  Perfect.  Now we're talking.
• Famed writer-director Joss Whedon tries to stop independent filmmakers… sort of.
• A former college classmate of the Barrack Obama thinks the President cheated in an surprising way.  Hmm…
• Watch Paul Ryan dismantle Obama-care in six minutes, in front of President Obama.
• Here's the best video game Easter egg/practical joke ever.  I wonder how many folks fell for that?

Samsung's Originality

Random Thoughts 8/7/12

• This is incredible: an abortion doctor went into an angry rant when pro-life people knocked on his door.  The doctor said, “I as a taxpayer do not wish for those babies to be born, and brought up, and kill those people in Colorado,” and “Let me see you adopt one of those ugly black babies.”  Wow.  Unfortunately, it's not news that the pro-abortion view overlaps significantly with racist eugenic philosophy.  To some, the plan is to kill those babies (he kept using the word "babies") to prevent crime, to save tax money on welfare, to get rid of the undesirables.  Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger openly campaigned for the reduction of undesirable populations (i.e. blacks, Hispanics, immigrants, the disabled, etc.).
• I voted today and proudly showed my photo I.D.  I didn't feel disenfranchised or discriminated against; it felt only right to prove that I was who I said I claimed to be.
• Zynga is kind of the sleazy dirtbag of video gaming.  Remember "Farmville" or "Mafia Wars"?  Zynga stole those ideas and got sued for them.  But the company has repeatedly produced note-for-note copies of successful games in what amounts to little more than thievery.  I'm not kidding, it's blatant copycatting.  Now they're big enough that suing them is too expensive (unless you're a big company like EA).  The only games they didn't blatantly rip off are the ones they've bought outright and relabeled as their own ("Words with Friends," "Draw Something").  I've played both of those games, but every time I see the Zynga splash screen, I feel dirty inside, like I'm contributing to hacks and piracy… because that's what it is.
• Voter fraud can have a huge impact.  A little voter fraud in Minnesota (ineligible convicts voting) helped turn a tight election, which made Al Franken the 60th Democrat in the Senate, which made Obamacare filibuster-proof, which may send us over a cliff financially like Greece.  All because of a few hundred questionable votes.
• I stepped on a toy last night and put all my weight on it.  That left a nasty little bruise on my foot, at the rear of the fifth metatarsal, and is hurting more than the typical lego-after-midnight injury.  Ouch!
• We've had over twenty days of 100+ temps this summer and over 70 days of drought.  Yuck.  This reminds me of summers as a child when the grass would die in July and we'd shoot bottle rockets out of the deep cracks in the ground.

Random Thoughts 8/2/12

• Our Chick-fil-a was swamped yesterday.  I drove by at about 1pm and there was a line down the street and people parking at Kohl's and walking across the empty lot.  That said there were haters, which is ironic because supposedly Chick-fil-a are the narrow-minded ones.
• Did you hear that former Jayhawk Jacque Vaughn was named the head coach of the Orlando Magic? Vaughn played for them briefly about 10 years ago and now he's the coach.  He's been with the Spurs as a player and assistant coach for the last six seasons.
• Here's twenty crazy-creative business cards.
• Yes, they make couches specifically for crazy cat-ladies.
• Hey, team USA finally caught up to and passed China in the medal count.  USA!  USA!  USA!  I would actually watch more Olympics but NBC shows stuff that is five+ hours old.  After five hours, facebook, twitter, wikipedia, and the radio have spoiled all the results.
• If you hold opinions different than mine, you still have the right to exist and do business.  This is America.
• I've actually heard real-life people talking about badminton in the last 24 hours.  Not at a company picnic, mind you, but in normal, regular life.  Wow.
• My kids are so obsessed with the video game Minecraft that their mother is grounding them from it as punishment.  I'm so proud of my little nerds.
• KU will play four exhibition basketball games in Europe (Switzerland and France) over the next week or so.