Santa brought me DJ Hero for the Wii this year for Christmas, and I have to say it’s the surprise hit of all of my new toys. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. In the ancient past, I spent time both in the club scene and as a DJ, […]
Year: 2009
Great Holiday Theater
I’ve been lucky enough to take in a couple of great Christmas-time shows this season and I wanted to pass along my reviews. First, a couple of weeks ago, I went to see A Christmas Story at the Repertory Theater of St. Louis. If you’re a fan of this iconic […]
An Inconvenient Purpose
A few years ago some folks started asking the question, What Would Jesus Drive? I’m not sure how seriously the question was supposed to be taken, as it was part of a campaign to demonize SUVs and the gas-guzzling ways of the people who drive them, but author Richard Gasaway […]
Tunes To Go
I’m lucky to work at a place that doesn’t mind its employees listening to music (on headphones) while they work. Years ago, I carried an actual MP3 Player to work everyday, but I quickly outgrew the limited storage capacity, so I ultimately transitioned to carrying a simple USB drive. The […]
iPod Touch
It was time to retire my Palm PDA, but replacing it was something of a challenge since no one really makes PDAs anymore that aren’t part of a smartphone. I’m still happy with my Virgin Mobile service, and you can’t beat the price, so I didn’t really want to upgrade […]
Kathy Griffin at the Fox
It’s been almost two years since we last saw her at Touhill, and she’s won a second Emmy since then for her show My Life on the D-List. This is my third time seeing her live, and I always walk out with my cheeks feeling sore from smiling for two […]
Green vs Green
If you want to “go green” for environmental reasons, that’s great. If you want to do it for financial reasons, that’s great too, but what I’ve discovered is that it might be difficult to quantify exactly how much you are saving. I’ve been waiting since last year to calculate the […]
Back to Normal
He we are at the end of another 30 days. I won’t talk about how difficult it was — I think I covered that last year. And I won’t make any vague promises about how I will try to increase the frequency of my posting, because I did that last […]
The Hangover
I don’t go to the movies much (there are three reasons for this), and even when I do, I rarely take the time to write reviews of them anymore (I have people who do that for me). But every now and then a movie comes along that I just have […]
Spammers Have Ruined The Internet
If you’ve ever gone through the process of getting a new phone number, you know that the previous owner’s reputation and associations may haunt you. The phone companies are supposed to let phone numbers lie fallow for some period of time (usually a year) before they reassign them to new […]
Michael
Last year at this time, almost to the day, I was remembering George Carlin after his passing. Yesterday, the universe reminded me once again that I’m old with the passing of two icons from my youth. Although I did watch Charlie’s Angels, like all other pre-pubescent males did back then, […]
Time Wasters
I usually save links to post to my other site, but these don’t really fit that well, so I thought I’d share them here. One is called Fantastic Contraption, and it is completely addictive once you figure out how it works. This will definitely appeal to any engineering types out […]
Hulu on the Wii
Last year we bought a Wii. Shortly after we downloaded the Internet Channel for it, one of its biggest limitations became apparent. The Wii ships with an ancient version (well, ancient by computer standards) of Adobe’s Flash player. This version works with some web sites, but most, like Hulu, require […]
Grade School Reunion
I told a few people last week that I was planning a reunion for members of my 8th grade class, and their reaction was something like, “8th Grade?!?” Is it that unusual? I don’t know. Maybe it is. Is it unusual because people don’t generally have reunions for that? Or […]
Whither Tobacco
This is the halfway point in this year’s 30 Days of Blog, and I thought I would devote at least one day responding to the man who started all of this. The Numb Trolleybus is singing Congress’s praises for finally making the move to regulate tobacco products. And I shared […]
Envirocycle Compost Bin
Since we’ve been talking about planting a garden for quite a while now, my Earth Day gift to myself this year was a new compost bin from Envirocycle. This bin has a fairly unique design in that it’s a tumbler, but the base incorporates a set of rollers that make […]
Schmittel’s Nursery
Last week I wrote about our new trees. We bought them from Schmittel’s Nursery in Maryland Heights, and paid them to install the trees. The installation was complicated by the fact that two of the trees were 5-inch maples that are very large and very heavy. They could not use […]
Chalkboard Door
In addition to the updated spice rack, we also recently remodeled the basement door. My wife has had the idea of turning it into a chalkboard ever since we moved in, and it’s finally a reality. She sanded and primed the door and then painted it with chalkboard paint (that […]
The Electric Car Cometh, Maybe
I’ve written about electric cars before, but for a while now I’ve been following what I consider to be the most promising entry into this market. The current offering from Zenn Motors is little more than a glorified golf cart. Classified as a Neighborhood Electric Vehicle (NEV), with limited range, […]
Our New Patio
Between increasing state tourism and boosting consumer confidence, we were already doing our part to stimulate the economy, but now we are funding infrastructure projects too! Eat your heart out, Obama! We have talked about it ever since we moved in, and now we finally have our patio. It still […]
Nexus LCD TV
It was finally time to replace my wife’s tired old CRT TV that she uses to watch her workout videos, so for our anniversary this year, we went shopping for a snazzy new flat screen. We went to American because they typically have the best selection in their store, and […]
A Poem Lovely As A Tree
It’s been a year since I last wrote about the torturous sewer project that transpired in our back yard. There is one final chapter in this saga, however, that I wanted to document here for the benefit of anyone else who might have to deal with MSD. A few weeks […]
30 Days of Blog – The Sequel
I’m probably going to regret this, but I signed up for another 30 days of punishment. Last year was a lot more difficult than I anticipated, but this year, I have taken the precaution of jotting down ideas in the weeks leading up to today, so I am hopeful that […]
Magnetic Spice Rack Revisited
It was time to update our old magnetic spice rack and my wife found some cool magnetic knife racks from IKEA. Combined with the containers we already had from Specialty Bottle, and this is no longer a spice rack, it’s wall art!