Today I was skyping with my brother (as in video chatting) and we ended up talking about computers. I must be totally rewarded (as in r*tard*d) because I ended up explaining to him why his next computer should be an Apple. Yes, they’re great, but in the end I should have talked with him about something besides computer. My relationship with him as a brother goes back far enough that we should get beyond 0’s and 1’s 🙂
Category Archives: The Obvious
For the Record…
For the record, Abby & Evie will not find Jessica and I signing off on anything like this: 16 Year Old Girl Marries Her Ex-Coach.
Creators Syndicate: An Old Model Shows Off Its Old Assets
I just got an email from Creators Syndicate this morning. Some woman (I’m assuming its a woman) by the name of Andrea Fryrear (which is an unfortunate last name if you break it up as a compound word) sent me an email (with a from name of only ‘Andrea’ which is a good way to get tagged as spam Ms. Fryrear) asking me to take down a farside cartoon that I had posted on my website. A single cartoon that I had found on the internet and copied onto my site. I immediately complied because I want to be a law abiding citizen. However, I had some questions for her: 1) How could I legally re-use the cartoon (could I pay a license fee) 2) Could I link to a Far Side book on Amazon.com and then the cartoon could potentially be a revenue generating advertisement for them? I haven’t gotten a reply yet, but the whole thing bugged me.
Gary Larson apparently has written about the subject and you can read about it on the syndicate website. It strikes me as a problematic solution to the real issue: the interwebs is a new model for publishing businesses and they must deal with the change. There are tons of ways they could go about making the new model work for them:
1) Require all comics that are republished by independent publishers (like bloggers) link to their site where they sell the books, mugs, shirts, cell phone wrappers, bumper stickers and collectible enema boxes to people who link through
2) Require the images to be linking to amazon.com with their associates ID so that they get to make money on Amazon.com selling their stuff
3) Give it away realizing that the more exposure they have the more likely people will seek out the funny/good content in sources that pay them (such as newspapers, paying websites, and again, Amazon.com)
4) Give it away and just say, “Gee, this interweb thing will hopefully be a passing fad.”
But sitting around hiring people like Andrea (who I am sure is really nice and probably makes a killer vegetarian salad when you come over to her house because she wouldn’t even hurt dead meat) to send out emails and seek out places where their old model is leaking and stick her finges in them is not an ideal method.
A New Story Wherein Randy Smells Like Burning Wood for Days
So about two (2) weeks ago I saw an episode of Good Eats called ‘Q’. It was about smoking pork butt (which is actually the pig’s shoulder). I lost site of any other Fathers Day Weekend (FDW) goals and determined to burn wood at such a slow rate that no flames were detectable, yet smoke would emit from the wood and make the meat and everything within a 15 mile radius smell of smoke. It worked. Too well. The smoked pork with an espresso barbecue sauce was finger-licking-good (without the geriatric chicken guy), but everything still smells smokey. I was at church, rubbed my nose and “poof!” smoke smell on my skin, in my nostrils and causing me to want to try smoking meat again in the middle of the street with a space suit on. Then the smokiness of the meat would be less smoked Randy and more smoked flavor on the meat when we bring it in from the smoker.
Good meats 🙂
The Funniest Blog Post About Dieting Ever
My friend Robin just sent me this link. Given that I know a few people who are going on diets (and including my personal need to be on one for the time being) this should be amusing:
Blue Shirts II
Today at Best Buy the emplyee at the checkstand didn’t like my question. I had two memory chips in two different packages. I asked why the previously opened chip package was four dollars more than the unopened package. He was confused as to why I would wonder why that was. It was simply that way. It felt a bit stone age-like. We’ll call the employee, whose name was I think Christopher, Thag. Thag must have just gotten off of his smoke break wherein he was smoking large sequoia trees and checking out Olgatha who was in charge of stocking the store. Her Cheetah-skin outfit was freshly tanned. After I figured out he wasn’t going to help me get the opened chip for a discounted price I just bought the new chip. As I swiped the credit card through the card reader he said, “The upside is that you can get the new chip cheaper than the used chip.”
Yeah, that’s not an upside, that’s a problem.
Skatelands
Today we went rollerskating with Jessica’s cousin’s family. As we approached the window to pay the man behind the window grinned with heavily decaying teeth. He knew it would be a big group. He began counting in three dollar increments:
“Three, Six, Nine, Twelve, Fifteen, Sixteen, Twenty, Twenty-four.”
It was awkward to have him count with the wrong interval. Of course my mathematical skillz can be fun, two.
Quote
Trint Ladd, standing next to me says, “Best Blue Shirt Ever.” Context: Describing an employee at Best Buy that actually had half a clue.
I Must Speak the Wrong Dialect
Today on my lunch break I put Evie in bed and got her settled. She was asleep, I came out to the kitchen and hugged Abby who had been instructed to go to the bathroom and then Jessica would tuck her in (Jessica has lunch tucking in duties for Abby and I have night time tucking in duties). Abby screamed all the way down the hallway about making sure mommy was tucking her in. I told her sternly, “Be quiet, your sister is supposed to be sleeping!” I was making sure that I wasn’t also really loud and therefore proving myself an idiot. No progress, she continued to be loud and slam things around the bathroom as she went to the bathroom and washed her hands.
Toilet sounds, stool unfolding and being slammed in front of the counter, water on at full blast to make the most noise, and lastly the loudest hand wiping you have ever heard.
I swear I must be speaking adult-ese, which is a slightly different dialect of English that her little mind cannot fathom.
Abby is Now Signed Up for School
Abby is now signed up for school, which is to say that Jessica is an emotional mess. OK, mess, is an overstatement, but its really hitting her that her baby is not much of a baby any more. Abby will be attending a one day a week school that will allow us to do a hybrid of homeschooling and public schooling. The city of Aurora hosts this program that will allow her to go in and do things in a classroom environment. That’s all I know about this system other than when she’s in high school she’ll be able to take college courses and I’ll get to pay a lot less for them. Yeah for school!