I'm not sure which sign of the apocolypse this is, but we've got to be getting close to the end. I was wandering through Target and I walked past the section where they sell music and video. They had several TVs on playing music videos of the top-40 crap that they usually sell there. Then the White Stripes came on. Run for the hills.

I just spent seven hours putting up fence in our yard. For all that toil in 90+ heat, all I have to show for it are nine blisters and 100 measly feet of fence. I'd estimate that I've got about 500 more feet to go. At this rate, I'll be left with bloody stumps by the time I'm done with this project. Please, please, please let it rain; I'm tired of pounding my way through dry ground.

I went to Moe's Broadway Bagels to get a sandwich for lunch today. I got the veggie and cream cheese on a pumpernickel bagel. Very tasty. But I digress.

While there, a lady came in and order some pumpernickel bagels too. She started whining because they only had the marbled pumpernickel and she wanted the ones that are "all brown." (Note to lady: this is the only kind that they ever have.) This got me thinking, just what in the world is pumpernickel? I had always assumed that it was a mixture of rye bread (or bagel) and sourdough; hence the marbling. According to dictionary.com, the lady at Moe's is correct; it's just a type of rye bread made with a coarse flour. I assume that this would result in a dough that is "all brown."

What's going on here? Is there some American version of pumpernickel, and that's what I'm used to seeing? I need some answers, and I need them pronto.

I'm not sure how I got there, but I ended up at the web site for Relevare. They use this really cool flash-based color-coded-box system for navigating through their site with a breadcrumb underneath to get you back where you were. It is too cool.

Okay, I think I've calmed down enough now (several days later) to describe the worst experience I've ever had checking into a hotel. Last Friday, we went to Vegas. Jen booked us a room at the Hilton Grand Vacations Club at the Flamingo Hilton Las Vegas. I kid you not, that's the actual name.

We arrived at 6:40 pm. Check in time is 4 pm. There was nobody else in the lobby, so we had the full attention of the staff at the front desk. The guy who was checking us in, Robin, was pretty lame. He couldn't figure out what rooms were available. After ten minutes of playing with the computer and talking on a walkie-talkie to a maid with whom he did not share a common language, he finally determine that our room was not ready. Great. At this point, I was a little peeved because we had already been standing there for ten minutes. Now he tells us it will be 45 minutes until our room is ready. Grrr.

Not to worry though, he hands us a card that entitles us to $50 of room charges and points us over to the main hotel to eat or get a drink. We checked out the buffet, but the line was a mile long. Instead we decided to get a drink; we'd get dinner after we checked in to our room. We go to the bar, order our drinks, and I hand the bartender the card that Robin, the boy-blunder, gave me. The bartender says, "This card's no good. It says the room is empty." I explain the situation to him and ask him to call the lobby to confirm that the card is good. He calls. No answer. He calls again. No answer. He goes to call again but I told him I'd just pay for the drinks myself. Now I'm really pissed off.

I brought the drinks back to our table and told Jen what happened. I told her we should give the hotel an hour (they said it would be 45 minutes). I also predicted that when that hour was up, our room would probably still not be ready.

We showed up back in the hotel lobby at 7:50, exactly one hour after we left. As we are walking in, I can here Robin on the phone saying, "They're here right now," in a panicked voice. Not a good sign. He tells me, yes our room is ready, the maid is "just finishing up." This is when I told Jen that she better go wait outside. I told him just what I thought of their place and also what a great experience I had using the card he gave me. No satisfaction was had. Even worse, there was no manager available. At this point I would have left and gotten a room elsewhere, but Jen had booked the room on Travelocity and it was pre-paid. Doh!

So we check in and go up to the room. The maid is mopping the floor. She then shoos us out so she can vacuum. I guess this is what qualifies as "just finishing up" at this fine establishment. At 8 pm, one hour and twenty minutes after we arrived, we finally made it into our room.

The next morning I went down to the front desk to find the manager. Still no manager at the hotel. Is it any wonder the place is falling apart?

We decided to go to the buffet for breakfast. After a short wait in the line we got the the cashier and I handed her our card. Well, you can imagine how shocked I was when, once-a-fricking-gain, the card does not work. Instead of playing the call-and-they-dont-answer game, I go back to the front desk to find out what's going on. After many excuses, they assured me that the card will now work. Still no manager available. I went back to the buffet, and the card now worked. But come on, what a pain in the butt.

We managed to complete our stay without further incidents but I never did get to speak to a manager to tell him how screwed up their hotel is. It appears that they just don't care. Of course, there was one final jab... when checking out, they neglected to remove the $50 credit from our bill. Real nice. Luckily I caught it and they coughed up the credit. Still, this was the worst run place I've ever stayed. There are two lessons I'm taking away from this: 1) never stay at the Hilton Grand Vacations Club at the Flamingo Hilton Las Vegas; 2) never pre-pay for your room. It leaves you with no leverage to get any kind of service.

The war on terror isn't even a year old, and they are all ready taking away individual rights without bothering to blame it on the "war on terrorism." Of course, that excuse would be a stretch here, but that hasn't seemed to have been a problem in the past.

Yet another company publicly announces that they are a bunch of crooks. The best part of this story is the reaction of the brokerage houses:

Robertson Stephens downgraded its WorldCom recommendation to "market underperform" from "strong buy," saying a bankruptcy filing was "highly likely" within the next 12 months. "We regret that we must make this call when it is too late to help investors stem losses," the brokerage said.

Come on, the stock was already trading under $1, from a high of $64, and they are just now figuring out that this stock might not be a strong buy?

Of course, we really have nothing to worry about. Now that the Bush administration is going to set up new rules for self-policing of accounting practices, everything will be all right. After all, these people are honest, right? Thanks goodness the businesses won't be burdened by cumbersome government policies that force them to obey the law... now if we could just get this type of policing instituted for speed limits.

This site provides some pretty humorous lessons on proper driving. Be warned though, it comes with music so if you're in an office environment, you might want to turn down the volume just a tad.

While in Las Vegas, we had dinner at a Japanese restaurant at one of the Teppanyaki tables (the ones where they cook the food in front of you). With these tables, you need to wait for a quorum before they'll start cooking your meal. While waiting, we ordered a Japanese beer. Soon, the table was almost fully seated with white-folk drinking Japanese beer. In come the final two patrons, some Japanese guys straight from Japan. They sit down and promptly order two Coors Lights. Not sure why, but I found this funny.

Side note: The above link to the Coors Light site requires you to be 21. They ensure compliance by making you enter a birthdate that indicates you are 21 years of age. That ought to keep the kids out.

On our trip to Las Vegas, we certainly hit the jackpot when it came to taxi drivers to and from the airport. When weren't more then thirty seconds into our first cab ride before the cabbie started telling us about his internet girlfriend in Ohio. Uh, okay, thanks for sharing. Sadly, the sharing did not stop there. This guy was pretty weird and he had the annoying, and frightening, habit of turning around to give you his completely psychotic laugh.

The second cabbie was even better. He was from Denmark and both his sons live in France. He spent the whole trip telling us about how terrible the United States is. His example of the "ideal" country: France. Yes, that's not a typo, France. According to this guy, there were a total of two murders in France last year; one of which was commited by a black American. I guess he left out the deaths caused by Neo-Nazis burning down housing complexes inhabitied by immigrants. He also went on at great length explaining about how innovative French industry is, how low the unemployment is, etc, etc. I could go on, but it pains me to recall the conversation with this nut job. I think Bill hit the nail on the head when we were discussing this later, "Ten more years and France will be a third-world country." If anybody is missing a war criminal from WWII, he's driving a cab in Vegas.

Just got back from a quick, 36-hour, trip to Las Vegas. I'm a little too tired to give the details right now, but even a trip as short as this provides the fodder for several good stories. Stories that will have to wait until tomorrow.

What's this, the treasury department is going to start printing $20 bills that are colored? Is this the end of the greenback? If so, I suspect it won't be long until some conspiracy nutcases use this as another example of the UN taking over control of our government.

My movie event of the year has arrived. I'm a huge Philip K Dick fan, and when a story of his gets made into a movie, it's usually really good. Past examples include Blade Runner and Total Recall. With Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise invloved, there's a lot of fire power being brought to this adapation of The Minority Report. Roger Ebert has given it four stars and a very strong review. Could I get any more excited? I think not. The only bummer is that I'm so busy this weekend, I won't be able to see it until some time next week.

This site has a pretty cool demonstration concerning the size of universe and the stuff the that's in it. It kind of reminds me of the science movies you'd see in Junior High School, but now you can control the action.

This latest ruling will of course depress many from Texas including, I suspect, our president. Perhaps it will be time for the administration to start squawking about "states rights" again. It seems that when the federal courts rule against some activity they want to be allowed, the administration gets on a soapbox about how states should be able to do what they want without interference from the federal government. Yet, the same administration doesn't hesitate to sue states which pass laws that they don't like--medicinal marijuana in California, euthanasia in Oregon, refusual of plutonium shipments in South Carolina to name but a few.

I guess we're supposed to be excited about this recent experiment. But I have a hard time get worked up over the fact that they've managed transport light 3 feet away at, wait for it, the speed of light. While this is an interesting experiment in communication theory, it's got a long way to go. So far as I can tell, it's not even clear that they've managed to actually transport the photons they started with; they've only managed to reproduce a similar beam elsewhere. There are many differences between photons and actual matter.

Oh happy day, happy day. I'm finally somebody now that Yabers has made it onto the Google search engine. And the best part is, it's the first result when you search for "Yabers". Yes indeed, now anytime somebody searches for that word, they'll be funneled right to this site. I hope my provider will be able to handle the increased traffic.

I saw an interesting program on PBS last night called Frontier House. It's kind of like MTV's Real World, except that it's aimed at a slightly different demographic. Basically, they take three families and put them out in Montana with the supplies that a homesteader would have had in 1893. They are then left to fend for themselves. There's the rich California family that can hardly figure anything out, the tough Tennesse family that always bitching about those damn prima donnas from California, and there's the laid-back family that takes it all in stride. All in all, it's pretty humorous.

Janet and I made a cool discovery about Yahoo! messenger IMVironments. Actually, Janet made the discovery, I was just there to share in the moment. If you are not familiar with these, they are used to liven up messenger chat windows. You can select IMVironments with different backgrounds, emoticons, etc. Our current favorite is the Hello Kitty IMVironment... the cheesier the better.

So here's the cool discovery: all of the GIFS used to create the IMVironment are stored locally on your computer when you initially download the IMVironment from Yahoo. That means that you can go into the directory where the GIFS are stored and edit them to your hearts content. There are 24 emoticons in the Hello Kitty IMVironment and as a test we edited one so that Hello Kitty had a knife sticking in her/his/its head with a nice stream of blood.

It worked! Needless to say, this is quite exciting there aren't many things more fun than taking something really cheesy and desecrating to the best of your abilities. I suspect than when done, we could package/zip the entire directory for distribution to fellow Hello Kitty users.

Now we need ideas for the emoticons. Some we have so far are: Smoking Kitty, Crack-Whore Kitty, Dr Evil Kitty, Beaten-up Kitten, Drunk Kitty, Knife-in-the-Head Kitty, Hooker Kitty, and Arrow-through-the-Head Kitty. Suggestions are welcome.

I am happy to report that the reverse osmosis water filter is now installed. It only took six, yes six, trips to the hardware store. I just love plumbing projects.

Today was the tournament for the Boulder GRU spring league. I'm sad to report that the beloved Flow Jobs did not win. And by, "not win", I mean, not a single game. That's right, ousted in the first round. We had a four point lead that we couldn't hold and we ended up losing the game by two points. All in all though, it was a great game and a great season. Much fun was had by all. And when you're playing B-league ultimate, that counts for something.

Jen and I went to see the Lion King on Friday night. I can't say that I really liked it, but it wasn't bad. It just sort of seemed like Broadway-Lite; it failed to move me. Maybe too much Disney influence, I don't know.

On the plus side, the production was extremely well done. The costumes were great (the hyenia named Banzai being a favorite of course) and the stage design was excellent. The lighting was also really interesting; they did a great job of simulating sunrises and sunsets.

I've spent half the day trying to install a reverse osmosis water filter in the kitchen. Actually, check that, I've spent half of half a day trying to install this thing, the other half has been spent making runs to the hardware store. This has to be the most annoying and infuriating home project ever; the stupid thing does not come with all of the parts required.

At the front of the instructions they tell you the tools/materials you'll need to complete the project. What they don't tell you is there is a 95% chance that you'll need twenty other pieces of plumbing. None of these things are expensive;they're small little things that, unless you are a professional plumber, your chance of having them laying about the house is nil. The worst part is, the instructions are so large--23 very large pages--that you have just about no chance of reading ahead to find out what you'll need (unless you're a plumber, in which case you probably have all this stuff at hand anyways). For five dollars more, they could have given you everything you need, but no, they screw you.

So far I've made three trips to the store, and I already know that I need, yet another, fricking piece for this job. Once I get done installing this, I'm going to leaf through the instructions and count the number of times they use the phrase "not included" when referring to a part required for the installation. Place your bets on what the number will be. The winner may be eligible for a free beer!

So here's a story that is funny so many ways. First, the fact that the Chineese steal their stories from US papers without crediting the source is pretty funny. Second, the fact that they would think to steal one from the Onion, is even funnier. Was the guy who submitted the story try to pull one over on the authorities or was he just that stupid? Either way, it's pretty damn funny. And then there's the funniest part, the reaction of the editor. It's exactly way you'd expect from these guys: first, offer a lame apology ("Yu said he would tell Huang to 'be more careful next time.'"); second, deny everything ("How do you know whether or not we checked the source before we published the story?"); lastly, turn the tables and deny there's anything wrong ("How can you prove it's not correct?").

The Onion is funny, but it's not nearly as funny as those Bozos.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of increased security in light of the terrorists threats that still persist. But it hasn't taken long for things to get completely out of hand. They've been holding this Jose Padilla guys in jail without charges for a month and a half. Now they say that they are going to hold him indefinitely and he will not be brought before a military tribunal. I'm sorry, but this borders upon the worst sort of abuse of power and it's pretty clear that this sort of behavior is strictly forbidden by the constitution. If the guy is guilty, charge him and convict him. Why the need to trample over his rights?

The Bush administration seems to think that because of the gravity of the threat, we can just push the constitution aside so that they can do whatever they like. Sorry, no! We've experienced threats to our national security before without resorting to this sort of thuggery. I'd say more, but jeez, I don't want to get throw in jail for exercising my once-guaranteed rights.

Last night everybody's favorite hockey team, The Fearsome One-Eyed Pigs, defeated the Jeters in a lopsided 7-3 game. At one point, the score was 7-1, but a couple of late penalties against the Pigs resulted in two goals for the Jesters.

I was recently asked, "If you could pass any one law, what would it be?" After my trip home from the airport last night, I'd venture to say that the law would involve corporeal, if not capital, punishment for those who drive slow in the fast with nobody in front of them. If the offender is in a Subaru, the fine would be doubled.

When I started thinking about this question seriously, it got a lot harder. It's hard to pick just one. At least with the genie, you get to pick three wishes.

Ah yes, another filght on United, another shafting. This time we got to spend an hour sitting in a completely full plan with a broken air conditioner. And, oh yeah, it was very hot out. Thanks so much United. At least after half an hour they were nice enough to open the front door of the plane. I'm sure it was quite refreshing for those sitting in first class.

Our flight was so full because it contained the entire Stanford baseball team on their way to the college World Series. They seemed like nice enough guys. If I cared enough to root for somebody, I'd say "Go Cardinal," or something like that.

Watching international competitions such as the World Cup always brings one of my many pet peeves to the fore: the names of other countries in English. For example, what we call Poland is called Pulska by those who live there, Germany is really Deutschland, Sweden is called Sverige by the Swedes, England is actually Great Britian, need I go on? Why is that we--and I think just about every other country/language is guilty of this too--can't call countries by their actual names? It's not as if the word Germany means something in English that will be lost if we call it Deutschland. It's just a label for a particular European country. Why can't we all use the same label? Anybody, anybody?

If you need a good laugh and you like making fun of David Hasselhoff--and, frankly, who doesn't--then this is the page for you. The reviews of Hasselhoff's latest album at Amazon.com are all satirical with every reviewer giving the album five stars.

Last night I saw Kiss of the Dragon, the second Jet Li movie I've seen. I've only seen one other Jet Li movie and this one was quite similar... in that it totally sucked! Bridget Fonda is in the movie, so that garners it at least half a star. But that's about all this movie has going for it. From past trips to the video store, I can tell that this guy has made a lot of movies. Are they all this horrible? If so, this guy could be the Chinese answer to Jean Claude van Damme.

While visiting here in California, I stay with Elliott--a rabid soccer fan. In an attempt to catch some of the world cup fever, I stayed up with him and a friend last night to watch the US/South Korea match. It was pretty good. So far as I could tell, the Koreans owned us. Still, we almost won and in the end we salvaged a tie. The official FIFA world cup site is pretty good; nice design, lots of info. But I prefer the CBC site since it's filled with cool flash stuff. It's a little less informative, but it looks cooler and when you're a bandwagoneer like myself, the looks are what matters.

I'm finding it hard to take President Bush seriously when he doesn't even take his own people seriously. The EPA releases a report which--surprise--finds that human activity is somewhat to blame for recent changes in the climate. Now this is not the Clinton EPA, this is the Bush EPA--filled at the top with his people of his own choosing. You can tell that because, despite the conclusion, the recommendation as to what to do is this: nothing!

President Bush still can't swallow the truth. His comment, "I read the report put out by the bureaucracy." If you can't beat them, make fun of them, it worked in grade school. The funny thing is, he's implying that we can't believe anything that comes out of the bureaucracy. Yet, looks who's at the top of the bureaucracatic pile; he is.

I hate to sound like some peeved researcher standing in the shadow of greater minds, but I've known this since like, I don't, second grade.

It now appears that we had most, if not all, of the clues needed to predict, if not avert, the tragedy on 9/11. Due to the large bureaucracy in place, and the fact that the clues were spread out among it, the whole picture was not assembled in time. Clearly the solution to this problem is to create, um, a, um, new bureaucracy.

Janet was telling me a story yestereday. It seems that while Betsy was eating a Chips Ahoy cookie, it suddenly dawned on Janet that the name "Chips Ahoy" is a play on the phrase "Ship ahoy". While Janet was about half way through telling me this story, I could see where it was going and it suddenly dawned on me that the name "Chips Ahoy" is a play on the phrase "Ship ahoy". Funny how that works. Frnakly, I'm not sure that I'm happy with this new knowledge. The name seems rather lame, and it makes me like the cookie less. Of course, it is a cookie so it can never be fully disliked.

Here's an interesting little fact: you can fit almost an entire pitcher of beer in an ultimate disc. When I first heard this, I didn't believe it. Last Sunday was Mike's birthday, so after our game myself, and the rest of the Flow Jobs, went over to Old Chicago--our league sponsorer. While there, we all got to witness this amazing feat of volumetric geometry as Mike was goaded into drinking a disc full of beer. About five seconds after he finished drinking this large quantity, we were then treated to a demonstration concerning the amount much puke you can fit in a disc. Way to go Mike, he was quite the good sport. Hats also go off to Nicki, our server. She not only put up with this behavior, she cleaned out the disc for Mike so that we could all sign it to commemorate this event.

Yesterday I flew from Denver to San Jose on my usual 8:30 am United Airlines flight. Since I'm used to taking this flight, I've come not to expect something real to eat, like breakfast. After all, you only have to bust out the door by 6:00 am to catch this flight and you don't arrive into San Jose until 11:00 am Colorado time. People don't normally eat a meal between 6 and 11 am do they? Of course, once again, United has managed to fall short of even my much-lowered expectations. Now they don't even serve a snack, such as pretzels or nuts. I guess I'll have to start flying a more high-end airline like Southwest if I want these sorts of amenities.

Jeez, at my college we had an underwater basket weaving class. But this class really takes the cake. Even scarier, it's taught by a women. She might actually know what she is talking about.

I'm not the big city type, but with the advent of this culinary masterpiece, a trip to New York may be in my future.

Have I mentioned how much Qwest sucks lately? In case you're not from Colorado, Qwest is the local, and pretty much only, phone service provider. I won't bore you with the numerous stories of the times they screwed me before, but they are at it again. The worst part is, this time it is partially my fault.

I use on-line bill paying to pay all my bills. By and large, I love it; it's quicker than writing checks, there's no postage cost, and the service is free at my bank. I've used this service for two years with no problems but now I've made my first mistake. Sadly for me, that mistake involves Quest; turns out I over-paid them by about $500. Doh!

No problem, I'll just call them up and get my money back, right? After the obligatory fifteen minutes on hold, I finally got a person. Turns out that to get your money back takes a minimum of two months! What a joke. Last time I had a billing problem with Qwest, they also screwed me out of my money for two months. After the two months went by, still no money. When I called them they couldn't find any record of my previous request so it was yet another two month wait. What do you want to bet the same thing happens again?

The funny thing is that Qwest is currently trying to pretend that they are a responsive company so that the government will let them into the long-distance phone market. Once this happens--which it most certainly will--I hope they spend their marketing money on customers that don't have them as their local service providers. I can't imagine that anybody who currently deals with Qwest would want to increase the amount of business that they have with them.

Here's an odd little site that present a Jesus of the week. Not to nit-pick, but it seems like they should have saved the soccer playing Jesus for this week in honor of the World Cup.

We're a couple years late, but we've finally joined the 21st century. Yes, we finally got a DVD player. We got a low-end (read cheap) Panasonic model, but it suits our needs since we don't have a high-definition TV. I'm amazed at how much better the sound and picture quality are with the DVD player versus a VHS tape. Considering how cheap these things are, I'm wondering why we didn't get one before this. If you're thinking of getting a DVD player, do so.

The first movie we rented was Vanilla Sky. I had heard almost nothing about this movie and I was completely blown away by how good it was. The acting is great, the visuals are great, and the story is even better. It actually reminds me of the book Ubik, by Philip K. Dick. While the plots are quite different, some of the underlying concepts in the movie can certainly be traced back to this novel. If you've seen the movie and liked it, you might like this book too. If you haven't seen the movie, I'd highly recommend that you do.

If your a vegetarian like myself, or you're just trying to cut down on your meat consumption, you've got to try Nate's meatballs. They're very tasty and unlike other wheat-meat substitutes that you can put in spaghetti sauce, they don't soak up all the sauce. They're also really easy to prepare; you just put them in the sauce while it's heating. Tasty, easy to make, not to mention good for you; they've got everything except for a good web site.