The advent of easy on-line auctions has brought many a moron out into the information super highway that Al Gore used to talk about. Finally, there is now a site dedicated to keeping tracking of some of the tackiest crap people have ever thought to sell. The site is pretty well done; they show pictures of the items as well as giving information about the selling price (yes, people still buy it), and the seller's comments. I even found a great item for Charlie, too bad it had already sold.

I'm not sure why, but I actually looked at the dials on my stove today. Turning on the stove is typically one of those sleep-walking activities for me, I don't really pay much attention to what I'm doing; it's either high, medium or low. Well, you can imagine my surprise when I noticed that this stove is the product of a user interface fiasco. The values for the heat are: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, HI. Now I don't want to sound too much like Nigel Tufnel from Spinal Tap, but shouldn't there be a '9' in there somewhere? Yes, I realize that this wouldn't actually make the stove hotter, but damn it this is America; when there is a knob of this sort, it's supposed to go from one to ten!

Now if this were something like a blender where the settings are intentionally baffling (Can anybody tell me the difference between frappe, puree, and blend?) I wouldn't mind if there weren't ten settings. In fact, for a blender I think only ten settings would be considered a low-end model. But this is a stove. And there's a system in place. One to ten. How hard is that? If you want to refer to ten as "HI" and one as "LOW", fine, so be it. As long as there are ten settings. Frankly, I'm amazed that none of the fine people at Frigidaire caught this travesty before it made it to the showroom floor.

Since this stove is haverst-puke-mustard yellow, it's on the way out the door anyway. But even it weren't so damn ugly, I think we'd still have to get rid of it based on this affront against all that is right and proper.

I was feeling a little down this morning so I had to visit my favorite inspirational site. Nothing like a little mocking humor to perk things up on a tired morning. My favorite motivational poster is this one:

While listening the the radio yesterday, I heard the most shocking commerical ever. There was a woman speaking in a kindly voice about the benefits of increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere. She kept going on and on about how doubling the CO2 level in the atmosphere will double crop yields world-wide. I wish I had a recording of it, the tone and manner were truly frightening. The gist of the commercial is that CO2 is good, and that if you are against it, then you are starving the planet. Who pays for this, the coal industry?

Well, you may be shocked to hear that the commercial doesn't quite give the entire story. While there are some crop yield improvements, the are not world-wide; other areas of the world--typically those with the most starving people--will be adversely affected. Not to mention all the other affects that raising the temperature of the planet can have. The sad thing is that with this slick production, there are people who will believe what they are selling.

With an overtime goal by Peter Forsberg, the much-loved Av's have taken a 3-2 series lead against the much-hated Red Wings. I'll be holding my breath until this series is over. All of the games have been close with three of the five going into overtime. This is truly a series where anything can happen. Please, oh please, let the Avalanche win.

Jen and I went down to the San Juans for Memorial Day weekend. It was great. Nice weather, no people, and as a special bonus, no traffic either way. All rather incredible for a 3-day weekend. While down there, we made a successful ascent of Handies Peak (14,048 feet) with the dogs. The view from Handies is incredible--peaks in every direction as far as the eye can see. It was Banzai's first 14'er. Way to go Banzai.

Speaking of names, I get a kick out of this site at the brunching shuttlecocks. You enter your name, at it tells you what your name would mean if you were a blood-thirsty cyborg. My name is an acronym for Robotic Individual Calibrated for Killing. I always felt like I had a special purpose in life. Now I know what it is.

On Seinfled, George Castanza said that if he were a porn star, his screen name would be Buck Naked. I'm sure he spent a lot of time coming up with such a clever name. If you've ever wondered what your porn star name would be, you can save yourself time and trouble by visiting the site that determines your screen name for you. Me, I'm Grant Steele.

I got a haircut yesterday. Normally I wouldn't bother to bring this up, but yesterday was a very special haircut. Sadly, my barber, Bob, is retiring. The haircut I got from him yesterday was the last I'll ever get from T-Bird Bob. I can't begin to express how much this bums me out. There's something really comforting about going to the same barber; you don't have to tell him what you want done, you just sit in the chair and he gives you your haircut. But no more. Now the painful search for a new barber begins.

It's the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, time to dust off the BBQ and get ready for some summer activites. But not here in Boulder. Woke up this morning to about six inches of snow on the ground. I'm guessing that by Sunday it'll be something like 70 F out. The spring-time weather in Colorado is wild. You've got to love it.

I used to be an engineer, primarily involved in writing computer simulations related to magentic recording. I only mention this because one of the programs I wrote was called Hamster (excuse the spelling). I only mention this because I stumbled across this site, and I only wish I knew about it back then. That would have been soooo cool.

If it seems that I have a bit of a "dancing" theme going here, I can only blame it on the rhythym--it really does get you.

As witnessed by this, some people have way too much time on their hands.

I got a copy of Dr Stephen Wolfram's new book, A New Kind of Science. If you believe the hype, this book will revolutionize every aspect of science and some areas of study that are not-quite-so-scientific. The book was twenty years in the making and now I can see why; the thing is huge! With over a thousand densly-packed pages, I think it's going to take me about twenty years to read it.

Is it just me, or is there a concentrated effort underway by the current administration to dramatically lower our expectations of them? Yesterday, the director of the FBI warns that, sure as the sun rises, there will be people blowing themselves up in crowded places sooner or later. Today, Donald Rumsfeld goes on record as saying that terrorists are sure to get weapons of mass destruction. Many other high-placed officials have been saying equally frightening things over the last week or so. It seems that they are resigned to the fact that this will happen and, instead of spending time trying to doing something about it, they are already trying to shift the blame off of themselves. Hello, can I trade-up for a government that actually tries to do something?

A while ago, I got to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on video. I had seen the film in the theater and thought it was great so I was pretty pumped to see the video. When we went to put the tape in--I know, major lameness, no DVD player--we realized that a horrible mistake had been made, we had gotten the dubbed version. Doh!

But all was not lost, it was dubbed unlike any other movie I've seen. First, they had done something, computer-related I suspect, to alter the mouth movements of the characters. Instead of seeing someone talk for five seconds with a total of two words coming out, the movement of the mouth actually matched up with the speech. The movements weren't exact--the shapes they formed didn't really match up to the words being spoken, but it was enough of an improvement such that you didn't notice anything as being wrong. Second, the voices used for the dubbing were great. One of the big complaints about dubbing is that you lose the emotion (read, acting ability) in the voice. In this film, there was absolutley zero loss. I don't know if they had the original actors reading for the dubbed version, but it sure sounded that way.

The dubbing on this film was incredible, I hope they start dubbing more movies this way. While I imagine purists will cringe, being freed up from having to constantly look at the bottom fifth of the screen allows you to better appreciate the great cinematography in this film.

I can certainly understand why the embargo against Cuba was first put in place. It was the middle of the cold war, a communist country was right on our door step; it was certainly in our best interest to have Castro's regime out of Cuba. But hey, that was what, forty years ago? A lot has changed since then, including all of the reasons that the embargo was first put in place. Yet the embargo remains. What gives?

If you believe President Bush, we have to keep the embargo in place because of the many changes we require of the Cuban government. He must really think we are stupid. The embargo is in place for one reason, and one reason only; to placate the Cuban refugees that make up a large voting contingent in Florida. Yeah, Bush remembers Florida all right. Does Cuba's government have problems? Yes, of course. But are they any worse than the countless other countries that we trade with (China comes to mind)? I certainly doubt it.

I think it's about time we come up with a foreign policy towards Cuba that is best for our country, and theirs, instead of a policy that soothes those who, when their country fell upon hard times, ran way instead of staying and trying to effect change.

So yesterday, while waiting for my beloved Avalanche to get their butts kicked by the much-hated Red Wings, I was flipping through the huge selection of channels (5 of 'em) on my TV. On NBC, they had the pre-race coverage of the Preakness Stakes which, I guess, is a big deal in the world of horse racing. I must admint, I was fascinated by the coverage--much in the same way I'd be fascinated by watching a car wreck; I didn't want to watch it but I couldn't turn away. Unlike the car wreck though, I was not watching from some sense of morbid fascination. Rather, I just couldn't believe the coverage they were giving the owners of these horses. They were talking about these people--the owners mind you--as if they were some sort of great atheletes, persevering through hard times and good. I mean, come on, all this people do is write the checks. Give me a break! From the coverage they were getting, you'd think that they had just rid the planet of some evil scourge. Instead, there just a bunch of rich people with huge egos who love the spotlight.

Anyway, congratulations to the horse that won: War Emblem. While I don't like the owners, and the whole concept of betting on horses seems pretty stupid, there's no denying that these horses kick some serious booty.