Monthly Archives: June 2008

Father’s Day Dinner Has Begun

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I began the ribs for Father’s Day dinner. They will be absorbing wonderful flavor from the rub* for over 24 hours and then Saturday they will start the cooking process. They’ll be smoked with pecan chips. Which is to say that the ribs will be smoked until just shy of temperature and then finished on Sunday afternoon to make sure that they’re still moist and yet pass FDA requirements for human consumption. We’ll be heating for dinner in an apple juice/jack daniels bath, which adds even more flavor. Yummy! I’ve yet to determine whether we’ll be having the espresso barbecue sauce, or some other sauce. We might even depart from the norm and offer two sauces. It will be father’s day of course, which means that we’ll be making other tasty treats, but I don’t have a final menu off the top of my head.

* For those of you who live in or visit Texas, I got the base rub recipe from the guys who cater the company barbecue events and its just awesome of them to share. Email me and I’ll get you the recipe. If you’re not part of the inner sanctum, I cannot share, sorry 🙂

Security in Light of Comedy

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I have a friend who went through security holding onto a Mountain Dew soda beverage.  Security at the airport.  The airport where congress in the United States has made that illegal.  So my friend was told by security, “You cannot take that drink through security, sir.”  His curt reply was, “What?  Am I going to make a bomb out of Mountain Dew?”

They really made the rest of his stay at the airport exciting and irritating.  Security, whose purpose is to make sure we’re all safe, was not a joke.  While traveling through the security checkpoint at the Denver International Airport, around the same time, I discovered I had accidentally left my pocket knife in my pocket (where it belongs).  I quickly slipped it into my computer bag with my keys and wallet and let it go through x-ray.  If they find it, I want them to find it and remove it from my bag and I’ll blush for having forgotten to put it on my night stand.  Security didn’t catch my knife on the x-ray screen.  I got to keep it, hidden, and then when I arrived in Grapevine, TX, I put it in my luggage that was checked so as to not get it confiscated by the DFW screeners who are effective at finding knives in bags… I’ve lost two to them.

Last night I watched Spaceballs at the movie theater with my brother-in-law.  In that movie there are a few really, really good bits on security holes that often exist in real-life security situations.  The combination number for the planet Druidia’s security system was 1-2-3-4-5 [as was the president’s luggage combination]. The security guards protecting the self-destruct mechanism inside of Spaceball One (the extra-long battleship) help foil the security.  Mel Brookes, the genius behind Spaceballs, saw the idiotic nature of much of our security in the world and cried foul, and nearly made me cry because it was so funny.

This morning I watched Pinky & the Brain with my daughters.  Again, they bring to light the comedy of lax security in what should be important situations.  Comedy makes us laugh about what is really important.  What is so often funny in the comedy is that we all know that the human error involved in the scenarios is quite probable.  Worse, we can laugh because we see the horrible catastrophe playing out before our eyes.  Even more we see in books like Dave Barry’s Big Trouble has a great section at the end of the book where terrorists jump through security with guns as if its no problem simply because they can time the system and game it.  The writing is hilarious (as is most of Dave’s work) but the problem is real.

Does the staff at the TSA, FBI, CIA, BMW or AT&T [that was a little comedy right there.  Very little.] ever watch comedy movies or television shows?  Because when they make choices about security it isn’t always obvious?  Bruce Schneier, a respected security expert and security blogger, has written on many occasions about the bumbling choices that get made in the name of security.  I would laugh if it wasn’t so irritating to have so many good examples.  I hear you loud and clear from here, Bruce, there’s very little that we won’t try in the name of security, except for the stuff that works, because that’s just ridiculous.

All By Myself…

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This evening upon exiting my office I walked out into the living room and there on the couch was Jessica curled up in the fetal position.  On my own, all by myself, I determined that she would not be making dinner tonight.  In almost ten years of marriage I have learned this important lesson: if its blatantly obvious, I should probably get a clue.  Clue received… now, what to do about dinner?

My Children are Insane with a Capital N

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Warning: this post contains lots of non sequiturs, I’m tired, and non sequiturs make me chuckle when I’m tired.  I’d ask if you follow what I”m saying except that that’s what a non sequitur is.  Elephants wander through the African planes and such.

Both girls have been in a mild to extreme melt-down mode since coming home from Indiana. I’m pretty sure this is due to the fact that Jessica and I have also been in punt mode. We’ve had a lot going on and when that happens we end up punting a lot. If you’re not familiar with the punt analogy it ties in with the popular American sport called American Football. Its called American Football because the rest of the world calls it American Football because they had a sport called football long before the Americans who took Rugby, Football, Sumo Wrestling and the Civil War and combined them together so that only very fast, large men (and now, apparently fast, large women) can mash into one another like two over-loaded sports cars while one smaller, but still huge man attempts to throw the ball to another smaller, not as huge man who runs even faster than the other fast runners in an attempt to not be killed by oncoming fast, large men. This is, in short, American Football.

In American Football there’s a really nice thing that happens: the teams share the ball and take turns having ‘possession’ of the ball. Possession is a loose term because each team could find themselves running with the ball, in fear of being creamed by the other team, lose the ball and then do what’s called fumbling the ball and then recovering the dropped ball, which means that they might still have possession even though they temporarily did not have possession. After enough time lapses where the team who had possession didn’t do anything useful with the ball, they might have what’s called a fourth down. The fourth down follows the first through third down. The number of downs you have depends on the number of severely injured fowl you have as well as fouls that may have been committed by players added together with the number of yards the football has traveled in a subjectively positive direction. Upon the fourth down, if the team who has possession of the ball decides that they’re too close to the scoring end-zone of the opposing team they can do what’s called punting. Punting is to kick the ball to the other end of the field but not into the scoring end-zone, just up close to it. The returning, opposing team then catches the ball and the player who catches the ball hopefully runs a long, long way so that they get back closer to the original end-zone so that they can get a touchdown. A touchdown has nothing to do with the downs mentioned earlier. So the punt is a scrambled maneuver that is only done to prevent the other team from scoring and is generally looked at as a last resort maneuver.

Since Jessica and I have been resorting to the punt for the last couple weeks due to some unforeseen circumstances, work, and a general sense of being whelmed (not over or under, but relatively pegged) the girls have probably felt like the football being kicked from one end of the field as we play American Football with each day.  This is why Evelyn threw a screaming temper tantrum as we were entering the fine Costco store this evening to collect small, specific bits of food for Father’s Day this weekend. Food that will keep us going in our punting, punting that will keep us from scoring, but keep the other team from scoring. Scoring which makes us like John Williams, who does not play American Football.

A Kids Song In the Making

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Tonight, to relieve some stress and to do something I haven’t done in far too long I began working on a song. A kids song. An alphabet oriented kids song. I wanted to post what I’ve recorded so far and wanted to get some feedback.

Lyrics:
W I Need U
I had to ask O Y
R U coming back
I think I’m gonna die

Xs are the hardest N
This life which is OK
You flew away
Like some distant blue J

W I need U
I had to ask O Y
R U coming back
I think I’m gonna die

MP3

Lens Envy

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If you have ever wondered why I like photography, and I’m pretty sure you all have, its because its a creative activity that lets you observe things around you and try to capture events, things and points of view for posterity. My friend’s dad growing up was a photographer and he always had amazing photographs hanging up that he had shot, developed, printed and framed himself. Photography was art, but it was also science and engineering for him. When I took photography in High School I was terribly disappointed to find out that the actual science behind it was not as forgiving as I had hoped it would be. I wanted for there to be a great, simple method to take photos, print them, hang them to share, and then to repeat with other photos. I gave up on photography because the steps to produce consistent results seemed just out of my grasp and budget (film costs money and the equipment to process yourself is expensive, as was having someone else process the photos for you).

Then digital photography showed up on the scene. What had once been exposing my inability, broken by fixer and developed into a pain was now being replaced by technology that allowed me to avoid the bad process that was error prone and gave me freedom to discover the awesomeness that was photography without the older headaches. Newer photography headaches have come up in places like storage, image software needing to be learned, file sharing issues and the like, but this was a step that cut out the toughness and let me just shoot and share.

Two different friends got me excited about photography again: Norm Avery at church. He showed me his Nikon 5700 and I was blown away by the picture quality and what it could do. And Mike Mason, who showed me his awesome photos as well as shared some great image manipulation techniques in photoshop.

My biggest problem was wanting the newest, biggest camera with the most amazing accessories. I griped about it one day to Mike who plainly put it into perspective. He told me that the camera didn’t make the photographer. It’s a simple statement. It is true that a great camera can take great pictures, but in the hands of the wrong person its just as bad as my grandma buying a computer and only using it for playing solitaire! The point was not that I should never get a better camera (I did, but it isn’t the bigger camera I had envied), the point was that I had to work with what I had to maximize my use of the camera before I worried about having the $5,000 setup. I have a $400.00 camera and I love it!

I have been to zoos, public gatherings and various events and seen people with monstrous cameras and they’re just walking around holding them while they chase their kids, drink a beverage or just sitting like a bump on a log. I was at the Denver zoo and a photographer with a massive lens was taking shots of the animals and I talked with him about it a little bit. I don’t remember the info he gave me on the lens, but I do remember his attitude of friendliness. He wasn’t out there showing off his camera (though I did notice it… a LOT), but he was enjoying his art. The cat he was trying to photograph was not cooperating with taking the shot he was after and he sat their patiently waiting for the shot. It wasn’t the camera. It helped to have the camera, it helped to have a great lense (this thing was amazing), but it was not the camera or the lens that had planned the shot out and waited for the cat to move into the right place, look the right way, and executed the shot.

Mike was right. I knew he was, but it required me to change my mind about what I expected from my photography experience. Mike, along with encouragement from my buddy Dave, suggested I get the Canon S3IS several years back so that I could take the pictures I wanted (most of the time) for a price that was less than $500.00. Because my attitude about the camera was different – it wasn’t about having 500 bells and whistles and huge lenses – I was glad to upgrade from the Nikon 5700 I had had, to the Canon S3IS. The IS stands for Image Stability, which was one of the big reasons, along with a faster auto-focus and a sports setting, that I bought the camera. With two little girls I needed faster auto-focus than the Nikon had and with sports I knew that I could get better shots of them in pretty much any activity they could participate in. The camera helped, but I knew I had to learn about the camera and use its tools as a smart photographer instead of just hoping that the camera could compensate for my lack of thought.

I have a lot to learn about this camera still. I need to think more about composition, depth of field, and just about every other detail of the photos I take, but my attitude has changed. My friend Jeremy often takes great shots where the composition is great, but the depth of field grabs my attention. Mike gets the lines to draw your eye to the subject, and Sean, the childhood friend whose dad is a photographer, plays with all of the details and finds new expressions of the images with adjusting colors. There’s lots to learn, and in the end, the camera is a tool, but its no replacement for the photographer who uses the tool to make art, capture moments, and create images of memories.

If you have a hobby or passion consider adjusting your attitude about certain elements to focus on the very substance of the passion. Don’t get caught up in the trappings (unless you’re into a dangerous sport, then get into the trappings, don’t kill yourself or get yourself killed), find out what the fundamental details are and explore them. In our consumer focused world exit the ‘stuff factory’ mindset and make sure you’re maximizing what you’ve got. Then, if time and money allow, you can get the cooler, newer, bigger, better, faster, flashier thing – but it won’t be excess baggage, it’ll be the right tool in the hands of a thoughtful individual.

You can find pictures by some of the folks mentioned above at the following locations:
Sean Franzen
Mike Mason
Jeremy Doan

Indiana Jones and the Abandonment of Everything Before It

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I just got back from Indiana Jones and the Crystal Cathedral.  Great googly-moogly this was a complete re-hack of the previous movies just look at all of the similarities:

 

Raiders of the Lost Ark, Last Crusade or Temple of Doom Crystal Meth Sameness
Older Harrison Ford Younger Harrison Ford 60%
Witty lines Witty limes Fruity
Nazis Reds 100% same, only different
Wrath of God Wrath of trans-dimensional aliens 0% sameness
Double Crossing Double Crossing much sameness
Sean Connery Picture of Sean Connery 10%
Indy as Junior “Mutt” as Junior -9000%

I could go on with the similarities, but as you can see by the above chart there’s so much in common between the past Indiana Jones movies and this one that if you’ve seen the first three, this one’s a re-run.

Actually, its totally different, which was either refreshing, or not. Either way, we enjoyed the movie on an entertainment level, but were let down because we wanted to have that nostalgia come back, but instead found the difference too great to just feel like we’d come back to see another story in the same series.

Kudos to Steven Spielberg for not casting ET as one of the aliens – or having reese’s peanut butter product placements within the film.

Also Kudos for magnetic materials being attracted to the highly magnetic aliens only some of the time. It made for more suspense wondering when something would be attracted and when something would be artificially non-metal.

Also, Also Kudos for having the noise of a small class rival that of a full auditorium sound effects people, it was awesome.