Random Access

Sunday – 27 February 2011
This morning started off as a grey, drab-looking day… but the sun has  put in an appearance. I’m good with that. After a quiet start to the day, we’ve done a little errand-running and shopping.

Yesterday was a low-key and fairly quiet day. We did a little errand-running in the late afternoon/early evening. I also put in a stop at The Train Shoppe; I picked up some more Superstreets. I have no idea where I’m going to use all of it, at this point, but I have it. I also fixed dinner last night: Baked teriyaki-marinated chicken and homemade macaroni-and-cheese, with a side salad. After that, we watched some shows on DIY and Food Networks and cleared a few more things off the DVR.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s item is The Apollo Theater (1, 2, 3)

The world famous Apollo Theater is so much more than a historic landmark – it is a source of pride and a symbol of the brilliance of American artistic accomplishment. With its rich history and continued significance, the Apollo Theater, considered the bastion of African-American culture and achievement, is one of the most fascinating chronicles in American history. It is one of the most famous music halls in the United States, and the most famous club associated almost exclusively with Negro performers. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and was the home of Showtime at the Apollo, a nationally syndicated television variety show consisting of new talent.

An Apollo Hall was founded in the mid-19th century by former Civil War General Edward Ferrero as a dance hall and ballroom. Upon the expiration of his lease in 1872, the building was converted to a theater, which closed shortly before the turn of the 20th century.

However, the name “Apollo Theater” lived on. In 1913 or 1914, a new building, designed by the architect George Keister, opened at 253 West 125th Street as Hurtig and Seamon’s New (Burlesque) Theater. In 1933 Fiorello La Guardia, who would later become New York City’s Mayor, began a campaign against burlesque.  Hurtig & Seamon’s was one of many theaters that would close down. Sidney Cohen reopened the building as the 125th Street Apollo Theatre in 1934 with his partner, Morris Sussman serving as manager. Cohen and Sussman changed the format of the shows from burlesque to variety revues and redirected their marketing attention to the growing African-American community in Harlem.

Ella Fitzgerald made her singing debut at 17 at the Apollo, on November 21, 1934. Fitzgerald’s performances pulled in a weekly audience at the Apollo and she won the opportunity to compete in one of the earliest of its “Amateur Nights”. She had originally intended to go on stage and dance, but intimidated by the Edwards Sisters, a local dance duo, she opted to sing instead.

The Apollo grew to prominence during the Harlem Renaissance of the pre-World War II years. In 1934, it introduced its regular Amateur Night shows hosted by Ralph Cooper. Billing itself as a place “where stars are born and legends are made,” the Apollo became famous for launching the careers of artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, James Brown, Diana Ross & The Supremes, Gladys Knight & the Pips, The Jackson 5, Patti LaBelle, Marvin Gaye, Luther Vandross, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Ben E. King, Mariah Carey, The Isley Brothers, Lauryn Hill, and Sarah Vaughan. The Apollo also featured the performances of old-time vaudeville favorites like Tim Moore, Stepin Fetchit, Dewey “Pigmeat” Markham, Clinton “Dusty” Fletcher, John “Spider Bruce” Mason, and Johnny Lee, as well as younger comics like Godfrey Cambridge. One unique feature of the Apollo was “the executioner” a man with a broom who would sweep performers off the stage if the highly vocal and opinionated audiences began to call for their removal. Jimi Hendrix won the first place prize in an amateur musician contest at the Apollo in 1964. The Jazz Foundation of America has celebrated its annual benefit concert, “A Great Night in Harlem”, at the Apollo Theater every year since 2001.

The club fell into decline in the 1960s and 1970s, and was converted into a movie theater in 1975. The Apollo was revived in 1983, when Inner City Broadcasting, a firm owned by former Manhattan borough president Percy E. Sutton purchased the building. It obtained federal, state, and city landmark status, and fully reopened in 1985. In 1991, the Apollo was purchased by the State of New York.

On December 15, 2005, the Apollo Theater launched the first phase of its refurbishment, costing an estimated $65 million. The first phase included the facade and the new light-emitting diode (LED) marquee. Attendees and speakers at the launch event included President Bill Clinton, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons.

As of 2009 it is run by the nonprofit Apollo Theater Foundation Inc., and draws an estimated 1.3 million visitors annually.

Stray Toasters

• Train show in T minus five days and counting…
• Why are America’s largest corporations paying no tax?
• I have found a ring maker who might just have an item that needs to go on The Covet List…
• Two planets found sharing same orbit
• Sword of Fargoal — addictive dungeon crawler for iOS
• The Likability of Angry Birds (from The Oatmeal):
  
  
• HIPAA Bares Its Teeth: $4.3M Fine for Privacy Violation
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: Zimbabwe Professor Arrested, Tortured for Watching Viral Vids
• Articulated cardboard Cthulhu

Namaste.

Wednesday – 23 February 2011
It’s midweek, once again.

Last night was SaraRules!’ night to host her book club. This meant that my evening had a roughly two-hour “free pass” section in it. I took advantage of this and did a little gallivanting. I went to West Valley Hobbies and Best Buy. I was mostly just window shopping at WVH, but I went to Best Buy with a purpose: To pick up the just-released All-Star Superman. (I also picked up the first two seasons of Moonlighting, as a boxed set.)

When I got back home, I played DCUO for a bit. This time, I ventured to Gotham City. As bright and shiny as Metropolis was, Gotham was equally dark and menacing. I met Commissioner Gordon and Robin (voiced by Wil Wheaton) before heading off to my first mission. On the way to that mission, I noticed that I flew over Crime Alley. I’d heard that there was a Feat available for finding the Wayne Memorial – the place where Bruce Wayne’s parents were gunned down. So, I detoured to see if I could locate it. I did. Not only was there, in fact, a Feat awarded for finding it, but the designers actually put a couple of roses on the ground there. Nice touch.

After her book club was finished, SaraRules! and I watched All-Star Superman. The movie was an adaptation of the award-winning mini-series of the same name (1, 2), by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. It did a good job of condensing the story into 76 minutes, without losing much of the tone and flavor that Morrison brought to the story.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
I’m going to go out of my standard semi-alphabetical order for today’s entry.  Today’s person of note is: Dwayne McDuffie (1, 2).

Dwayne McDuffie was an American writer of comic books and television. His notable works included creating the animated series Static Shock, writing and producing the animated series Justice League Unlimited, and co-founding the comic book company Milestone Media.

McDuffie was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan and attended The Roeper School. He attended the University of Michigan studying physics, graduating with an undergraduate degree in English, and a graduate degree in physics. He then moved to New York to attend film school at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

While working as a copy-editor for a financial magazine, a friend got him an interview for an assistant editor position at Marvel Comics. While on staff at Marvel as Bob Budiansky’s assistant on special projects, McDuffie also scripted stories for the company. His first major work was Damage Control, a series about the company that shows up between issues and tidies up the mess left by the latest round of superhero/supervillain battles. While an editor at Marvel, he submitted a spoof proposal for a comic entitled Teenage Negro Ninja Thrasher in response to Marvel’s treatment of its black characters. Becoming a freelancer in early 1990, McDuffie followed that with dozens of various comics titles for Marvel comics, DC Comics, and Archie Comics.

In 1992, wanting to express a multi-cultural sensibility that he felt was missing in comic books, McDuffie co-founded Milestone Media, a comic book company owned by African-Americans. McDuffie explained:

If you do a black character or a female character or an Asian character, then they aren’t just that character. They represent that race or that sex, and they can’t be interesting because everything they do has to represent an entire block of people. You know, Superman isn’t all white people and neither is Lex Luthor. We knew we had to present a range of characters within each ethnic group, which means that we couldn’t do just one book. We had to do a series of books and we had to present a view of the world that’s wider than the world we’ve seen before.

Milestone debuted its titles in 1993 through a publishing deal with DC Comics. Serving as editor-in-chief, McDuffie created or co-created many characters, including Static. After Milestone had ceased publishing new comics, Static was developed into an animated series Static Shock. McDuffie was hired to write and story-edit on the series, writing 11 episodes. McDuffie was hired as a staff writer for the animated series Justice League and was promoted to story editor and producer as the series became Justice League Unlimited. During the entire run of the animated series, McDuffie wrote, produced, or story-edited 69 out of the 91 episodes.

On February 21, 2011, McDuffie died from complications due to a surgical procedure performed the previous evening.

And, the/another reason that I chose McDuffie for today’s personality: He wrote the adaptation for All-Star Superman, which was released yesterday.

Stray Toasters

• Court Weighs the Power of Congress
• The germiest parts of plane travel and how to avoid getting sick
• Sentencing due in hate crime killing of immigrant
• 
• Cell Phone Use Tied to Changes in Brain Activity
• DC Superhero Inspired Fashion on the Runway at NY Fashion Week

Namaste.

Monday – 21 February 2011
It’s a sunny, but cold, President’s Day. While many people/businesses have the day off, ours is not one of them. I just noted how empty the parking lots are. *shrug* Of course, most of the people who are off today don’t get a week-and-a-half off for Christmas, so I really shouldn’t complain too much.

Over the weekend, I apparently picked up SaraRules!’ cold. Yay. It hasn’t been completely hellish – mostly a cough, some sniffles and a few aches – and I seem to be on the downhill side of it now. Of course, I still sound like a frog, but what can you do…?

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s person of note is Denmark Vesey (1, 2)

Denmark Vesey, originally Telemaque, was an African American slave brought to the United States from the Caribbean of Coromantee background. After purchasing his freedom, he planned what would have been one of the largest slave rebellions in the United States.

No records existed on Denmark’s origins, although scholars have speculated that he may have been born in St. Thomas or in Africa. Denmark labored briefly in French Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), and then was settled in Charleston, South Carolina as a youth, where Joseph Vesey kept him as a domestic slave. On November 9, 1799, Denmark Vesey won $1500 in a city lottery. He bought his own freedom and began working as a carpenter. Although a Presbyterian as late as April 1816, Vesey co-founded a branch of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1817.

By 1818 he was preaching to slaves at plantations throughout the region and, drawing on the Bible, he told them that, like the Israelites, they would gain their freedom. Although he would later deny it, he allegedly held meetings at his home to collect arms for an uprising he was planning for as many as 9000 African-Americans in South Carolina.

Inspired by the revolutionary spirit and actions of slaves during the 1791 Haitian Revolution, and furious at the closing of the African Church, Vesey began to plan a slave rebellion. His insurrection, which was to take place on Bastille Day, July 14, 1822, became known to thousands of blacks throughout Charleston and along the Carolina coast. The plot called for Vesey and his group of slaves and free blacks to execute their enslavers and temporarily liberate the city of Charleston. Vesey and his followers planned to sail to Haiti to escape retaliation. Two slaves opposed to Vesey’s scheme leaked the plot. Charleston authorities charged 131 men with conspiracy.

Vesey defended himself ably at his trial, but was sentenced and hanged along with about 35 blacks; some 35 others were sold to West Indian plantation owners. It would have been the largest slave revolt in U.S. history, but its end result was the passing of even stricter laws against African-Americans.

Stray Toasters

• An Eye-Opening Look at America’s Academic Standards
• U.S. Sets 21st Century Goal: Building a Better Patent Office
• Trying to find the replacement part I need for my railroad crossing has been like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
• Five retirement planning mistakes to avoid
• 
  
• LotR Rewritten from a Mordor Perspective
• Another Stop on a Long, Improbable Journey
• RR in a Box – this is an interesting concept.
• Women in War: “I’ve Lived Out There With the Guys”

Namaste.

Tuesday – 15 February 2011
Day Two of the work week is upon us… and it’s a bright, sunshiny day. It’s even supposed to be fairly warm, too. And tonight is D&D 3.5 night.

Last night, SaraRules! and I had a quiet evening in. That was one of the benefits of having celebrated Valentine’s Day last week. We had a quick dinner and then settled in for a movie. As I had mentioned wanting to watch Star Trek (2009) on Saturday after watching The Hurt Locker, SaraRules! was gracious enough to agree to watch it last night. It was fun — we MSTK3-ed parts of the movie. All-in-all, it was a very good evening with the coolest wife ever.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s personality is: President Barack Obama (1, 2):

Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned after his election to the presidency in November 2008.

A native of Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004.

Obama served three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid against a Democratic incumbent for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, he ran for United States Senate in 2004. His presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party’s nomination. In the 2008 general election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009.

Stray Toasters

• Dwayne Johnson – The Rock Back in the Ring
• Companies Warn That Higher Prices Are Looming
• Radio sleuths may have discovered Coca-Cola’s secret recipe
• I like this new Demotivator from Despair.com:
  



• My Neutrophils Can Kick Your White Blood Cells’ Butt
• Best-Kept Secret Now Has a Grammy
  • If you didn’t know Arcade Fire, Spalding before…
  • Long-time readers may remember that I posted about Ms. Spalding in these posts: 1, 2
    
• Your Favorite Characters as Facebook Avatars
• 
• Taking Her Art Seriously, Not Herself
• Drumming Up More Addresses on the Internet
• A Fight to Win the Future: Computers vs. Humans

Namaste.

Monday – 14 February 2011
It’s Monday, which means that it’s the start of another work week.

It’s also Valentine’s Day

or, as Neil Gaiman put it:

Happy Valentine’s Day. Or take pride in Being Single Day. Or join me in the newly-created Why Is My Wife In Australia Day (people who live in Australia are not eligible to join).

or, as I was just reminded: It’s Anti-Green Lantern Day. (Look at a color wheel, it will make sense then.) I wasn’t thinking about it when I got dressed this morning, but I selected a green shirt, white turtleneck and black slacks for today’s fashion fare. It wasn’t until Julie came into the office, in red-and-black that I thought about it being Anti-GL Day, too.

Yesterday, I finally picked up a six-car hopper set that I’ve been eying at a local hobby shop. It’s an older set – and showed no signs of moving any time soon – so they cut me a rather nice deal. (That didn’t hurt my feelings.) After that, I headed home and saved the world (DCUO-style) for a bit before heading over to the in-laws’ for dinner and a movie. Last night’s feature was Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s person of note is: Huey Newton (1, 2).

Huey Percy Newton was a political and urban activist who founded the Afro-American Association and co-founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.

Newton was born in Monroe, Louisiana, the youngest of seven children to Armelia Johnson and Walter Newton, a sharecropper and Baptist lay preacher. In 1945, the family settled in Oakland, California. The Newton family was destitute, and often relocated throughout the San Francisco Bay Area throughout Newton’s childhood. Despite this, he contended that his family was close-knit and that he never went without food and shelter as a child. Growing up in Oakland, Newton claimed that “[he] was made to feel ashamed of being black.” In his autobiography Revolutionary Suicide, he wrote, “During those long years in Oakland public schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more or to question or to explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process nearly killed my urge to inquire.”

Although he graduated at Oakland Technical High School in 1960, Newton was illiterate. During his course of autodidacticism, he struggled to read Republic by Plato. He read it five times to better understand it, and it was this success that inspired him to become a political leader.

In the mid-1960s Newton decided to pursue his education at Merritt College where he met Bobby Seale. The two were briefly involved with political groups at the school before they set out to create one of their own. Founded in 1966, they called their group The Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Unlike many of the other social and political organizers of the time, they took a militant stance, advocating the ownership of guns by African Americans, and were often seen brandishing weapons. The group believed that violence—or the threat of violence—might be needed to bring about social change. They set forth their political goals in a document called the Ten-Point Program, which included better housing, jobs, and education for African Americans. It also called for an end to economic exploitation of black communities.

The Black Panthers wanted to improve life in black communities and established social programs to help those in need. They also fought against police brutality in black neighborhoods by mostly white cops. Members of the group would go to arrests in progress and watch for abuse.

Newton earned a bachelor’s degree from UC Santa Cruz in 1974. He was enrolled as a graduate student in History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz in 1978, when he arranged to take a reading course from famed evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers, while in prison. He and Trivers became close friends. Trivers and Newton published an influential analysis of the role of flight crew self-deception in the crash of Air Florida Flight 90. Newton earned a Ph.D. in social philosophy at the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1980. His doctoral dissertation was entitled War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America.

On August 22, 1989, Newton was fatally shot on the 1400 block of 9th street in West Oakland by a 24-year-old Black Guerilla Family member Tyrone Robinson during an attempt by Newton to obtain crack cocaine.

Stray Toasters

• Valentine’s Day dating tips from lovestruck scientists
  • The Valentine’s Day Survival Guide
    
• In Spokane, a Mystery with No Good Solution
• Back to the Future (not the movie)
• 
• I’m not sure that I’m overly fond of the new UI on Gizmodo.
• NYC gives Optimus Prime a parking ticket
• States Aim Ax at Health Cost of Retirement
• 
• Yay for problems with the locks on the doors to two of our storage rooms!
• Watch IBM’s Watson on Jeopardy! Tonight

That’s good for now.

Namaste.

Friday – 11 February 2011
It’s Friday. Granted, it’s my “on” Friday, but it’s still the end of the work week.

Last night, SaraRules and I attended a performance of Never Fight a Shark in Water, a one-man play based on the experiences of Gregory Bright, a man who served 27^1/2 years in prison for a second-degree murder charge that he didn’t commit. The play, starring Charles Holt,  gave a time-compressed view of Mr. Bright’s ordeal, from his arrest to his emancipation. Mr. Holt gave a very powerful and emotional performance… despite what had to be one of the worst audiences that I’ve been part of:

• People wandered in, not quietly, ten to fifteen minutes after the play had started;
• One woman’s daughter was restless – and very vocal about it – throughout the performance;
• One man shouted down at Mr. Holt not smoke; he lit and took two or three drags off two (2) cigarettes over the course of the two-hour performance, both of which were extinguished within a minute or two of lighting them. The smoking of both cigarettes was integral to each part of the story. To his credit, Mr. Holt queried the audience and offered to not smoke – the audience response was overwhelmingly in favor of continuing.
• People got up, leaving and returning to the theatre, mid-performance… again, not quietly.

After the performance, there was a brief Q&A panel session, led by KUER’s Jennifer Napier-Pierce, with Gregory Bright, Charles Holt and a professor whose name eludes me. There were some rather good questions posed by the audience, including:

• Q: How long did it take for you to let go of your anger?
  A: “Five or six years.”
• Q: You taught yourself to read while in prison and spent so much time reading legal documents to help in securing your freedom; do you read, now, just for enjoyment?
  A: “When I learned to read, I read everything: George Orwell… Plato… comic books. Reading was such a great thing! I still read… I just don’t have as much time to do it.”

Mr. Bright was very candid and open in his responses. Even when asked about his former love, who – after 23 years of visits – told him that she’d married someone else, he said that she had been a major force in his life and that she remains a very good friend today.

In all, it was a very good way to spend the evening. If you have a chance to catch a performance of Never Fight a Shark in Water, you should do so.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s personality is Eartha Kitt:

Eartha Mae Kitt was an American actress, singer and cabaret star. She was perhaps best known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 hit Christmas song “Santa Baby”.

Kitt began her career as a member of the Katherine Dunham Company in 1943 and remained a member of the troupe until 1948. A talented singer with a distinctive voice, her hits include “Let’s Do It”, “Champagne Taste”, “C’est si bon”, “Just an Old Fashioned Girl”, “Monotonous”, “Je cherche un homme”, “Love for Sale”, “I’d Rather Be Burned as a Witch”, “Uska Dara”, “Mink, Schmink”, “Under the Bridges of Paris”, and her most recognizable hit, “Santa Baby”, which was released in 1953. Kitt’s unique style was enhanced as she became fluent in the French language during her years performing in Europe.

Throughout the rest of the 1950s and early 1960s, Kitt would record, work in film, television and nightclubs, and return to the Broadway stage in “Mrs. Patterson” during the 1954-55 season, “Shinbone Alley” in 1957, and the short-lived “Jolly’s Progress” in 1959.^[9] In 1964, Kitt helped open the Circle Star Theater in San Carlos, California. Also in the 1960s, the television series Batman featured her as Catwoman after Julie Newmar left the role.

In 1968, during the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Kitt encountered a substantial professional setback after she made anti-war statements during a White House luncheon. The public reaction to Kitt’s statements was extreme, both pro and con. Publicly ostracized in the US, she devoted her energies to performances in Europe and Asia.

During that time, cultural references to her grew, including outside the United States, such as the well-known Monty Python sketch “The Cycling Tour”, where an amnesiac believes he is first Clodagh Rodgers, then Trotsky and finally Kitt (while performing to an enthusiastic crowd in Moscow). She returned to New York in a triumphant turn in the Broadway spectacle Timbuktu! (a version of the perennial Kismet set in Africa) in 1978.

Ms. Kitt became a vocal advocate for homosexual rights and publicly supported same-sex marriage, which she believed to be a civil right. She had been quoted as saying: “I support it [gay marriage] because we’re asking for the same thing. If I have a partner and something happens to me, I want that partner to enjoy the benefits of what we have reaped together. It’s a civil-rights thing, isn’t it?”

Kitt died from colon cancer on Christmas Day, 2008 at her Weston, Connecticut, home.

Stray Toasters

• Poetry
• Some people choose to be inconsolable.
• How did dinosaurs do it?
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: British woman dies after botched butt ‘enhancement’ in a hotel
• 
• After the “less-than-ideal-to-me” X3: X-Men United, I have been… skeptical… in my attitude towards this summer’s X-Men: First Class. Until this appeared yesterday:

  Now, I’d say that I’m “cautiously optimistic.”

• Nothing’s ‘Unknown’ about January Jones
• I stopped at Pin-up Girl on the way back from lunch. Kendra (the on-duty barista) and I were a little more than “mildly” shocked to learn that Christy (another barista) had NO idea who James Brown was.
• Sex questions answered: 1959
• 
  
• Hospitals Shift Smoking Bans to Smoker Ban
• Twitter Users Tricks Sony into Posting ‘Secret’ PS3 Code
• Super Mario Game Theme: Violin

Namaste.

Thursday – 10 February 2011
Another NBN Thursday is upon us.

Last night was D&D (4.0) game night. We started a new encounter, created by . It was good… and a little odd. We were traveling down a road, minding our own business, when we were ‘jacked by a goblin… which stole an item that we were trying to return to its rightful place. We chased the gob through woods and into a clearing. There, we found:

1. A goblin corpse (the goblin we’d been chasing, in fact) and
2. A pink slime

For those of you – like me – who have never encountered Item #2 before, allow me to share with you a little insight:

The key thing to note there is its “Seasoning Mist.” All but two of us were caught in the mist… which nearly turned us into a party of cannibals. Nearly. Instead, a few of us (those who missed our saving throws) wound up eating some of the carrion in the area. Yeah, it was like that. We managed to survive the encounter.

Back at home, SaraRules! and I tackled another recorded episode of NCIS and a couple of other shows before she called it a night and I dove into yesterday’s four-color haul.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s item is Juneteenth.

Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, is a holiday in the United States honoring African American heritage by commemorating the announcement of the abolition of slavery in the U.S. State of Texas in 1865. Celebrated on June 19, the term is a portmanteau of June and nineteenth, and is recognized as a state holiday in 36 states of the United States.

Though Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, with an effective date of January 1, 1863, it had minimal immediate effect on most slaves’ day-to-day lives, particularly in the Confederate States of America. Texas, as a part of the Confederacy, was resistant to the Emancipation Proclamation, and though slavery was very prevalent in East Texas, it was not as common in the Western areas of Texas, particularly the Hill Country, where most German-Americans were opposed to the practice. Juneteenth commemorates June 18 and 19, 1865. June 18 is the day Union General Gordon Granger and 2,000 federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to take possession of the state and enforce the emancipation of its slaves. On June 19, 1865, legend has it while standing on the balcony of Galveston’sAshton Villa, Granger read the contents of “General Order No. 3”:

The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.

Stray Toasters

• On the way to work this morning, I was listening to X96’s Radio From Hell morning show. They had an interview with Gregory Bright, who – after serving 27 years in prison for a second-degree murder charge – was released from prison due to wrongful conviction. Mr. Bright and Lara Naughton have turned his story into a one-man play, called Never Fight a Shark in Water, which is being performed at the University of Utah this evening; there is no admission charge for the performance. For more information about tonight’s performance, click here.
• Breakout Style
• Fooducate: Eat a Bit Better
• Houston Opera Still Embraces Bold Ventures
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: 7-Year-Old Buys Harrier Jet — Then Gets Dreams Shattered
• 
  
• Medical Treatment, Out of Reach
• Navigating the new UI at Gizmodo will take some getting used to…
• ‘Superman’ artist Joe Shuster’s lurid comic world exposed
• 
  
• Girls Love Gadgets, Too: Gifts for Your Geeky Sweetie
• Black Metal Greeting Cards

Namaste.

Wednesday – 09 February 2011
Midweek. Which makes it not only new comics day, but also D&D (4.0) night. Now, to just make it through the work day…

Last night, SaraRules! and I helped her father (and both brothers) move an organ out of her grandfather’s apartment. I’m going to let that sink in for a moment…

::: pause :::

Got it? Okay. Moving on. It was cold last night. Sub-freezing, with a not-so-lovely wind adding to the “fun.” The move took a little longer than it could/should have. But, in the end, the organ was loaded into a U-Haul trailer. Amen. Mid-move I jokingly asked SaraRules! where she was taking me for dinner. Without missing a beat, she asked,”Where do you want to go…? Outback?” Mmm, Outback…

And, so it was, later, as the miller told his tale, that her face – at first just ghostly – turned a whiter shade of pale that we wound up at the local Outback Steakhouse.  Aussie Cheese Fries. Prime Rib. Good. On the way home from dinner, we drove past A Perfect Dress, to see what new fashion (or horrors) they had in the windows. Turns out that SaraRules! and I agreed that most of the items weren’t too bad; there were only a couple of dresses that we questioned. The rest of the evening was spent, on the couch, watching TV. And I wrapped up the night playing CoD: Black Ops with a few coworkers before calling it a night.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
I had a hard time coming up with something that began with the letter “I” for today’s entry. Eventually, an idea came to mind… and it’s one that I find apropos, as today is also the day that new comic books release:

Today’s item is Incognegro, a graphic novel by Mat Johnson.

(c) DC Comics

For a synopsis of the book’s plot, I’ll refer to an interview that Mat Johnson did with Newsarama in 2007:

NEWSARAMA: Mat, let’s start with the big picture. What’s the gist of Incognegro?

Mat Johnson: It’s the story of a mixed person of African-American descent who passed for white in the 1930s to investigate lynchings in the South. He goes down to Mississippi on a specific mission that ends up getting tangled really quickly, and it turns into a noir thriller.

NRAMA: What can you tell us about the protagonist Zane Pinchback and where he is when the book opens?

MJ: He’s a reporter in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance, and he’s kind of a minor celebrity, but he’s only famous on paper. Nobody can know what he looks like because of what he does. So he’s somewhat frustrated by that, being famous but not being famous. He’s dealing with his past, and part of what happens in the story is he’s pulled back into his personal past, his own story.
NRAMA: In addition to dealing with his own issues, he also has to go “incognegro” and go to the South to save his brother. So there’s a whole external drive going for him, in addition to his own internal awakening, right?

MJ: He has a twin brother who looks much like himself but is dark-skinned. His brother has had none of the breaks that Zane had, largely because of his difference in appearance, even though they’re of the same mother and father. When he goes back, Zane has to confront this other life that he was able to escape, but that his brother instead had to dive deeper into. And that’s really the emotional heart of the book, the two of them and their lives, the convergence of them coming together.

Johnson also notes that the story was partially inspired by Walter Francis White, a light-skinned African-American who used his skin color (or lack thereof) to investigate lynchings and race riots in the American south in the early 20th Century:

MJ: Yeah. Well, Walter White is the primary idea for the piece, when he was investigating these lynchings, but there’ve been other points in history – I’m African-American, but I look fairly white or European, so I’ve always been very fascinated by these points in history, when people like myself interacted, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. I was fascinated with the idea of taking something that is part of my life and part of past lives, and seeing if I could make that into not just a curiosity, but into something that actually could mean the difference in lives.

As I wrote in 2008, when I first read the book:

Incognegro, written by Mat Johnson (1, 2, 3) – a light-skinned Black man, himself – is adeptly written. Its characters aren’t just stereotypical caricatures; they have depth. The settings aren’t just backdrops, they add to the flavor of the scenes. The story also contains a few interesting plot twists, as well.

See also: The New York Times review of the book.

Stray Toasters

• Employee surveys. Normally, I’d be all *twirls finger in air* about it, but it seems as though our robot overlords protectors are actually invested in seeing what employees think and feel about the company and their jobs and what – within reason – can be done to make our working lives better.  We’ll see how this shakes out.
• Speaking in Defense of Science
• Ravens’ Michael Oher tells his side in memoir
• Lymph Node Study Shakes Pillar of Breast Cancer Care
• 
• Packers celebrate Super Bowl win with 56,000 fans at Lambeau Field
• Women “computers” of World War II
• Worker Trapped in Plane’s Cargo Hold Avoids Becoming Passenger
• Homeowners face “new normal” in housing bust
  • Chart: Owing more than home is worth
• 
• Iconoscope No. 1: Star Wars Episode IV
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: Sofa made from a coffin

Quote of the Day
Today’s quote comes from last night’s moving extravaganza. While standing outside, watching the comedy of trying to figure out how to arrange the organ in the trailer, SaraRules! thanked me for “…helping my crazy family” with the move. We joked about it for a moment before she noted:

SaraRules!: “Oh, your family’s crazy, too.”
Me: “Yeah, but at least my family has the good sense to be crazy indoors, where it’s warm!”

We both got a good laugh out of that.

Namaste.

Monday – 07 February 2011
It’s Monday.
And the NFL 2010-2011 championship title has returned to Titletown.  But, more on that in a minute.

It was a good weekend. There was a fair bit crammed into the three days. Highlights include:

1. A trip to Ogden to visit Wonderful World of Trains, The Bookshelf, as well as Almosta Junction on Friday, with .
2. A trip to Jitterbug Coffee Hop for the first time in a very long while.
3. A good HeroClix tournament on Saturday.
4. The Super Bowl yesterday.

Sure, there were other things that happened over the weekend, but those were the big ticket items.

And, tonight, SaraRules! and I are celebrating an early Valentine’s Day by going out to dinner (none of those Feb. 14th dinner crowds for us!) and going to Kingsbury Hall to hear Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra perform.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s person of note: Althea Gibson

Althea Gibson was a World No. 1 American sportswoman who became the first African-American woman to be a competitor on the world tennis tour and the first to win a Grand Slam title in 1956. She is sometimes referred to as “the Jackie Robinson of tennis” for breaking the color barrier.

Gibson continued to improve her tennis game while pursuing an education. In 1946 she moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, to work on her tennis game with Dr. Hubert A. Eaton and enrolled at Williston High School.

In 1958, Gibson retired from amateur tennis. Before the open era began, there was no prize money, other than an expense allowance, and no endorsement deals. To begin earning prize money, tennis players had to give up their amateur status. As there was no professional tour for women, Gibson was limited to playing in a series of exhibition tours.

According to Lance Tingay of The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, Gibson was ranked in the world top ten from 1956 through 1958, reaching a career high of No. 1 in those rankings in 1957 and 1958. Gibson was included in the year-end top ten rankings issued by the United States Tennis Association in 1952 and 1953 and from 1955 through 1958. She was the top-ranked U.S. player in 1957 and 1958.

In 1971, Gibson was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, and in 1975, she was appointed the New Jersey state commissioner of athletics. After 10 years on the job, she went on to work in other public service positions, including serving on the governor’s council on physical fitness.

On September 28, 2003, at the age of 76, Gibson died in East Orange, New Jersey due to circulatory failure and was interred there in the Rosedale Cemetery.

On the opening night of the 2007 US Open, the 50th anniversary of Gibson’s victory at the US Championships in 1957 (now the US Open), Gibson was inducted into US Open Court of Champions.

Instant Replay: Football
Yesterday, Super Bowl XLV was played in The Temple of Jones Cowboy Stadium…

Pittsburgh Steelers at Green Bay Packers
25 – 31
The Steelers and the Packers, teams from a couple of blue-collar towns, battled for the Vince Lombardi Trophy. The Packers took advantage of key Pittsburgh turnovers in the first half, establishing a 21 – 10 lead by halftime. The Steelers returned to form in the second half, scoring 22 points and coming within two minutes of potentially winning the game, but couldn’t pull all of the pieces together to make it work. Congratulations to the Packers on their win.

Stray Toasters

• I think that owning these would be fun.
• Killing of Missionary Rattles Texas Border
• I would love to know who at Microsoft and/or Treyarch thought that it was a “good idea” to make this a “Double XP Weekend” for Call of Duty: Black Ops.
• I finally remembered to get screenshots of (the DCUO version of) Nefer-Tem:

  

• Bill Nye on America’s “horrible” science education
• Why Some People Evade Colds and Others Don’t
• 
  (I do own the game and it’s a lot of fun; I just haven’t played in a LONG time…)
• Jos. A. Bank 2011 Spring Style Guide – It may require a Facebook account
• From the “Whoops!” file: Christina Aguilera mangles national anthem at Super Bowl XLV
• I ordered a Superstreets vehicle and a CSX water tower for my layout. I should probably start putting some brainpower towards of the logistics involved with building the multi-level deck that I have in mind.
• Best Art Ever (This Week)

  

• Pharmacies Besieged by Addicted Thieves
• Betting on News, AOL Is Buying The Huffington Post
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: Sicily couple murdered man with butter
• Steampunk Etch-a-Sketch

That’s good for now.

Namaste.

Friday – 04 February 2011
It’s my 9/80 day off. Amen.

Today is also World Cancer Day.

Last night, Mary and Matt came over for dinner. SaraRules! made breaded pecan chicken strips, scalloped potatoes and a zucchini/squash mix for dinner. Mary and May brought a cake for dessert. Dinner, the company and the conversation were all very good. After our company left, I finished reading this week’s four-color haul and played a little (a very little) DCUO before calling it a day.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Since it’s the weekend, and it’s going to be “a little” busy, you’re getting THREE entries:

• Dorothy Jean Dandridge was an American actress and popular singer, and was the first African-American to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.

  

  She performed as a vocalist in venues such as the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theater. In 1954, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress and a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for Carmen Jones. By 1956, still under contract to Fox, Dandridge hadn’t made any films since Carmen Jones. Fox still believed that Dorothy was a star, but just didn’t know how to promote her. One of the head chiefs at Fox once said “She’s a star, but we don’t have any films to put her in or leading men to cast her opposite.”

  In 1957 Dorothy’s luck came back when Darryl F. Zanuck cast Dandridge as Margot, a restless young Indian woman, in his controversial film version of, Island in the Sun, co-starring stars such as Joan Fontaine, James Mason, Harry Belafonte, Joan Collins, Michael Rennie, and Stephen Boyd. This film was a success which brought Dandridge back to the public eye. Determined to reinvent her career, she decided to wait on Fox to call for her to make a film.

  In 1959, Columbia Pictures cast Dorothy in the lead role of Bess in Porgy and Bess; Dorothy was again nominated for a award, this time for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. Dorothy was again eager to see if she was to win the award, but she once again lost. A few weeks later Dorothy was released from her 20th Century Fox contract.

  Dandridge was married and divorced twice, first to dancer and entertainer Harold Nicholas (the father of her daughter, Harolyn Suzanne) and then to Jack Denison. Dandridge died of an accidental drug overdose, at the age of 42.

• Ralph Waldo Ellison was a novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer.

  

  Ralph Ellison, named after Ralph Waldo Emerson, was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma to Lewis Alfred Ellison and Ida Millsap.In 1933, Ellison entered the Tuskegee Institute on a scholarship to study music. Tuskegee’s music department was perhaps the most renowned department at the school, headed by the conductor William L. Dawson. While he studied music primarily in his classes, he spent increasing amounts of time in the library, reading up on modernist classics.

  During World War II, Ellison joined the Merchant Marine, and in 1946 he married his second wife, Fanny McConnell. She worked as a photographer to help sustain Ellison. From 1947 to 1951 he earned some money writing book reviews, but spent most of his time working on Invisible Man. Fanny also helped type Ellison’s longhand text and assisted her husband in editing the typescript as it progressed.

  Published in 1952, Invisible Man explores the theme of man’s search for his identity and place in society, as seen from the perspective of an unnamed black man in the New York City of the 1930s. In contrast to his contemporaries such as Richard Wright and James Baldwin, Ellison created characters that are dispassionate, educated, articulate and self-aware. Through the protagonist, Ellison explores the contrasts between the Northern and Southern varieties of racism and their alienating effect. The narrator is “invisible” in a figurative sense, in that “people refuse to see” him, and also experiences a kind of dissociation. The novel, with its treatment of taboo issues such as incest, won the National Book Award in 1953.

  In 1964, Ellison published Shadow and Act, a collection of essays, and began to teach at Rutgers University and Yale University, while continuing to work on his novel. The following year, a survey of 200 prominent literary figures was released that proclaimed Invisible Man the most important novel since World War II.

  Ralph Ellison died on April 16, 1994 of pancreatic cancer, and was buried at Trinity Church Cemetery in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City.

• Ella Jane Fitzgerald, also known as the “First Lady of Song” and “Lady Ella,” was an American jazz and song vocalist.

  

  Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia. In her youth Fitzgerald wanted to be a dancer, although she loved listening to jazz recordings by Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby and The Boswell Sisters. She idolized the lead singer Connee Boswell, later saying, “My mother brought home one of her records, and I fell in love with it….I tried so hard to sound just like her.”

She made her singing debut at 17 on November 21, 1934 at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York. She pulled in a weekly audience at the Apollo and won the opportunity to compete in one of the earliest of its famous “Amateur Nights”. She had originally intended to go on stage and dance but, intimidated by the Edwards Sisters, a local dance duo, she opted to sing instead in the style of Connee Boswell. She sang Boswell’s “Judy” and “The Object of My Affection,” a song recorded by the Boswell Sisters, and won the first prize of $25.00.

In January 1935, Fitzgerald won the chance to perform for a week with the Tiny Bradshaw band at the Harlem Opera House. She met drummer and bandleader Chick Webb here. Webb had already hired singer Charlie Linton to work with the band and was, The New York Times later wrote, “reluctant to sign her….because she was gawky and unkempt, a diamond in the rough.” Webb offered her the opportunity to test with his band when they played a dance at Yale University.

She began singing regularly with Webb’s Orchestra through 1935 at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom. Fitzgerald recorded several hit songs with them, including “Love and Kisses” and “(If You Can’t Sing It) You’ll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini)”. But it was her 1938 version of the nursery rhyme, “A-Tisket, A-Tasket”, a song she co-wrote, that brought her wide public acclaim.

With Decca’s Milt Gabler as her manager, she began working regularly for the jazz impresario Norman Granz, and appeared regularly in his Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) concerts. Fitzgerald’s relationship with Granz was further cemented when he became her manager, although it would be nearly a decade before he could record her on one of his many record labels. Fitzgerald left Decca and Granz, now her manager, created Verve Records around her. Fitzgerald later described the period as strategically crucial, saying, “I had gotten to the point where I was only singing be-bop. I thought be-bop was ‘it,’ and that all I had to do was go some place and sing bop. But it finally got to the point where I had no place to sing. I realized then that there was more to music than bop. Norman….felt that I should do other things, so he produced The Cole Porter Songbook with me. It was a turning point in my life.” Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook, released in 1956, was the first of eight multi-album Songbook sets Fitzgerald would record for Verve at irregular intervals from 1956 to 1964. The composers and lyricists spotlighted on each set, taken together, represent the greatest part of the cultural canon known as the Great American Songbook. Fitzgerald’s song selections ranged from standards to rarities and represented an attempt by Fitzgerald to cross over into a non-jazz audience.

Plagued by health problems, Fitzgerald made her last recording in 1991 and her last public performances in 1993. Miss Fitzgerald was generous throughout her career, and in 1993, she established the Charitable Foundation that bears her name: The Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation, which continues to help the disadvantaged through grants and donation of new books to at-risk children.

Stray Toasters

• MarknTyme sent me a link to an article about a “skin gun,” used as a treatment for burn victims. The accompanying video isn’t for the squeamish… but the results are rather impressive.
• 
• A Super Bowl oddity: No cheerleaders for Packers or Steelers
• No Easy Fixes as Internet Runs Out of Addresses
• Today in rock ‘n’ roll history: The day the music died
• 
  
• Gunman hijacks Greyhound bus in North Carolina
• The King of Cool’s Motorcycle Is for Sale
• Yesterday’s amazing house of tomorrow is today’s boring house of today

And, on to the day!

Namaste.

Thursday – 03 February 2011
It’s my NBN Technical Friday. Amen.

Last night was D&D (4.0) game night with and company. We almost team-wiped twice. It wasn’t pretty. But, we finished two encounters… and everyone survived. Barely. One neat, but unrelated thing: Jack and I noticed a Justice League Chess Set for sale for $50 (USD). We were intrigued. We pondered it for a bit before realizing that we could just “build” a chess set, using ‘Clix figures for the pieces for a lot less, should we decide that we really couldn’t live without one.

I also played a little DCUO last night. I’m still having a lot of fun with it. Last night, I was sent to a new (to me) part of Metropolis, Chinatown, to meet Zatanna for my next set of missions. Let me just say that this part of the city looks simply amazing.  The DCUO team also released another teaser video that portends ill things…

AND… new information has been released about new content being added to the game, including their Valentine’s Day event content, as well.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s personality is: Stokely Carmichael

Kwame Ture, also known as Stokely Carmichael, was a Trinidadian-American black activist active in the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement. He rose to prominence first as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced “snick”) and later as the “Honorary Prime Minister” of the Black Panther Party. Initially an integrationist, Carmichael later became affiliated with black nationalist and Pan-Africanist movements. He popularized the term “Black Power”.

In 1960, Carmichael went on to attend Howard University, a historically-black school in Washington, D.C., rejecting scholarship offers from several white universities. His apartment on Euclid Street was a gathering place for his activist classmates. He graduated with a degree in philosophy in 1964.

He joined the Nonviolent Action Group (NAG), the Howard campus affiliate of SNCC. He was inspired by the sit-ins to become more active in the Civil Rights Movement. In his first year at the university, he participated in the Freedom Rides of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and was frequently arrested, spending time in jail. In 1961, he served 49 days at the infamous Parchman Farm in Sunflower County, Mississippi. He was arrested many times for his activism. He lost count of his many arrests, sometimes giving the estimate of at least 29 or 32, and telling the Washington Post in 1998 he believed the total number was fewer than 36.

Carmichael saw nonviolence as a tactic as opposed to a principle, which separated him from moderate civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr.. Carmichael became critical of civil rights leaders who simply called for the integration of African Americans into existing institutions of the middle class mainstream.

The Black Panthers and Carmichael disagreed on whether white activists should be allowed to help the Panthers. The Panthers believed that white activists could help the movement, while Carmichael thought as Malcolm X, saying that the white activists needed to organize their own communities first. In 1969, he and his then-wife, the South African singer Miriam Makeba, moved to Guinea-Conakry where he became an aide to Guinean prime minister Ahmed Sékou Touré and the student of exiled Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah. Makeba was appointed Guinea’s official delegate to theUnited Nations. Three months after his arrival in Africa, in July 1969, he published a formal rejection of the Black Panthers, condemning the Panthers for not beingseparatist enough and their “dogmatic party line favoring alliances with white radicals”.

It was at this stage in his life that Carmichael changed his name to Kwame Ture to honor the African leaders Nkrumah and Touré who had become his patrons. At the end of his life, friends still referred to him interchangeably by both names, “and he doesn’t seem to mind.”

Carmichael remained in Guinea after separation from the Black Panther Party. He continued to travel, write, and speak out in support of international leftist movements and in 1971 collected his work in a second book Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism. This book expounds an explicitly socialist, Pan-African vision, which he seemingly retained for the rest of his life. From the late 1970s until the day he died, he answered his phone by announcing “Ready for the revolution!”

Stray Toasters

• This LEGO video was sent to my by angstd:
• Shippers Concerned Over Possible Suez Canal Disruptions
• The White Stripes Call It Quits
• The Super Bowl is Sunday. As the Ravens (and Dolphins and Panthers) are not in the game, I guess this means that I’m a Packers fan… at least through the weekend.
  • Even the Avengers are choosing sides… again:
    
• Ad banned for simulating drug use
• MTH has announced a locomotive that I now covet.
  I specifically want it in the Army livery.
• Reprogrammed stem cells are loaded with errors
• LEGO Mystery Box
• 
• Dispute Over Jewish Archives Derails Russian Art Loans to U.S.
• Classic Teen Heroes Boogie Down in the Art of Bill Walko
• This is a very cute commercial:
• The time has come for child seats on airplanes
• Foreclosed Homeowners Go to Court on Their Own

Namaste.

Tuesday – 25 January 2011
We’re almost a full month into the new year, but my fingers still want to type “2010.”

Today is my sister-in-law, Chelsea’s, birthday:

It’s snowing again. It’s not a heavy snowfall, but it is constant.  The snow doesn’t appear to have affected drivers in this part of the valley too much… but we’ll see how it goes as the morning progresses.
UPDATE: It’s gotten a little worse:

With that in mind, the Council for Better Driving: Utah would like to remind drivers to exercise caution when traveling today.

Last night, SaraRules! was kind enough to pick up the engine, tender and boxcar that I was having repaired at The Train Shoppe:

The locomotive now goes like the proverbial “bat out of Hell” — I hitched it up to a nine car consist and opened the throttle… and off it went. With the quickness. I am happy. I am also happy because I now have three (3) fully-functional locomotives.

SaraRules! fixed a very tasty recipe of stuffed peppers for dinner. As we ate, we cleared another couple of episodes of NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles off the DVR. Then, it was time to catch up with a few coworkers for CoD: Black Ops online. It was fun; I even tacked three more levels onto my character. After the group broke up, I tried to play a little more DC Universe Online. Once again, it locked up on me. (I’m going to be Level 30 before I ever get out of the introduction, at this pace…) I have a support ticket logged with Sony. In the past 12 hours, I’ve had two responses on it – one was a request for more information; one was a possible solution to the problem. I’m going to test it out this evening.

Chew on This: Food for Thought
This morning, Marvel’s latest event, “Fantastic Four: 3,” kicked off.

In this event, a member of the Fantastic Four dies. There’s been great speculation as to which character it would/could be. Comics news sites announced, as early as last night, that some mass media sources were spoiling the news of which member died.

*sigh*

It was bound to happen, I know… but I still held out a glimmer of hope that I would be able to make it until tomorrow – when I pick up my books – without hearing who the doomed person was.

Nope.

This morning, on the drive in, an announcer on a local radio station just blurted it out. There was no “Hey, if you’re a fan of the FF, you might want to turn the volume down for a minute” warning or anything.  Just “BAM!”

Monkeys.

Ear Candy
I heard this on the way to work this morning…

…which, for some reason, made me think of this:

Stray Toasters

• I finally got to introduce Kristen to iChat’s video chat option last night. It was nice to not only talk with her, but to see her, as well. I also gave her a “walking tour” of the house.
• The Sartorialist
• Bethany Sew and Sew: Character Aprons
• Chopin ‘probably had epilepsy’
• Test find high levels of lead in reusable bags
• Updated version of yesterday’s comic:



• Documents Open a Door on Mideast Peace Talks
• Jan. 25, 1921: The Robot Cometh
  • All Hail Our Robot Overlords! Sci-Fi’s Best Bots
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: Flier goes ‘berserk’ over blocked lav, punches attendant
• 2011: A security manager’s wish list
• Unusual Wave of Violence Strikes Police Officers

And with that… on to the rest of the day!

Namaste.

Friday – 21 January 2011
Hello, Day Off!
I greet you with coffee and Irish cream!

Today is also ‘ birthday:

Last night, UPS finally delivered my copy of DC Universe Online.

Oddly, I didn’t immediately bound downstairs to install it. No, instead I waited until after dinner (I cooked burgers on the grill; SaraRules! fixed Tater Tots and green beans). It was one of the longest game installations I’ve dealt with… well, at least since playing games on my Commodore 64. Yeah, it was that long. But, it installed.

And then it patched.

And then I had to update the .NET Framework on my computer.

And then… it started.  Finally.

For the most part.

There still seem to be “a few” problems with the game. But, I have it. And that’s a start. I… recreated (sort of)… Nefer Tem. This version is a little different than his CoH counterpart. I’ll have to see how his power set progresses and how close/different he winds up.

After I got the game going, SaraRules! and I headed to the gym. Having come to the conclusion that I need more of it in my workout routine, I did… cardio. Well, a little. I spent 15 minutes on the elliptical, maintaining roughly a 5.5 MPH pace.

• Elliptical: 15 minutes, ~5.5 MPH
• Bench Press: 3 sets/8 reps, 185 lbs
• Shoulder Press (dumbbell): 3 sets/10 reps, 30 lbs
• Curls (dumbbell): 3 sets/10 reps, 30 lbs
• Sit-ups (incline): 3 sets/10 reps

Not too big a workout, but it was still a good one.  And I don’t know what I was thinking, but I completely forgot that my last bench press weight was 165 lbs, not 185. Nothing like jumping 20 lbs in weight… after nearly 2 weeks out of the gym! UGH!

:::INTERLUDE:::
Here’s a little something for your Friday morning:

Stray Toasters

• Investigators search for woman in connection with 1987 abduction
• 10 Most Popular Autocorrects from December 2010 (courtesy of )
• How Creed Saved a Norwegian Boy From a Pack of Wolves
  This story would have been 500% better if it had been Apollo Creed.
• F.D.A. Sees Promise in Alzheimer’s Imaging Drug
• 
• For itemizers, IRS has set tax-filing date of Feb. 14
• By way of my friend, Marie: What’s the Longest Word in the English Language?
• A Path Is Sought for States to Escape Their Debt Burdens
• Jump in de line…
  Rock your body in time!
• 12 Robotic Garages Worthy of a Bond Villain

Up. Out.

Namaste.

Thursday – 13 January 2011
This NBN Thursday morning finds the sun, visible today, creeping over the mountains. There’s still a bit of inversion haze over parts of the valley, but being able to see the sun – as opposed to a “slightly brighter spot in the sky” – is nice.

Last night was D&D game night with m3lody and company. Our opponents for last night’s encounter laid a good, old-fashioned beat-down on us. It was not pretty. We prevailed, but there was a lot of near-death dealt to our group.

SaraRules! rented, and we watched, The Town last night. It was good. The story, followed Ben Affleck’s character, Doug MacRay, and his heist crew, as they engaged in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with the Boston Police Department and the FBI, following a bank robbery. MacRay complicates things even further due to an attraction to one of the robbery victims. The movie also contained what SaraRules! called one of the best bits of dialogue… ever:

Doug MacRay: I need your help. I can’t tell you what it is, you can never ask me about it later, and we’re gonna hurt some people.
James Coughlin: …Whose car we takin’?

Stray Toasters

• For reasons that I have yet to discern, I woke up with the chorus from Richard Marx’ Hazard running through my head.
• Obama’s Message in Grief: Talk in a Way That Heals
  • Text of President Obama’s Speech at the Service
    

    If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate — as it should — let’s make sure it’s worthy of those we have lost. Let’s make sure it’s not on the usual plane of politics and point-scoring and pettiness that drifts away in the next news cycle.

    The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better. To be better in our private lives, to be better friends and neighbors and coworkers and parents.  And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their death helps usher in more civility in our public discourse, let us remember it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy — it did not — but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to the challenges of our nation in a way that would make them proud.

• Suggs Plays the Villain
• Tense time for workers, as career paths fade away
• As the Web Turns
• For Ms. :



• China, in a Shift, Takes on Its Alzheimer’s Problem
• Carnival Cruise Lines to pull out of San Diego
  • Thanks to too much time spent on Q-Link as a kid, I always want to type “San Diego” as “Sandy Eggo.”
• Harvard psychologist explains the science of zombies
• Spec Fic Parenting: This, My Son, Is a Sword

And that, as they say, is that.

Namaste.

Sunday – 09 January 2011
Typing “2011” still feels a little “off” to my fingers.

It started snowing again last night. I haven’t made it to a window to see how deep the snowfall is yet. I’m hoping for the light, powdery snow, as opposed to heavy, wet snow.

Yesterday, I judged another HeroClix tournament at Dr. Volt’s Comic Connection. The turnout was good; there were ten players. The tourney was a “constructed” event, with players having to build a 300-point team, utilizing at least one figure from the new set. Once again, first and second places were separated by only three (3) points. After the tournament, I got into a 6-player game with some of the guys. 1,000 points per player. One map. We split into two teams of three. I played the Black Lantern Corps:

• Black Hand
• Kal-L
• Martian Manhunter
• Nekron
• Scar

I also used the Black Lantern object. I was rather pleased with how well the team worked and how useful the figures’ abilities were, despite having my pieces eliminated first. I can’t be too upset about that though: The other team saw my figs as threats… and, quite frankly, I would have done the same, were situations reversed. It was a fun – and very long – game.

After I got home, I watched Resident Evil: Afterlife with SaraRules!, and later introduced her to The Thomas Crown Affair. While somewhat entertaining, Afterlife was not a good movie. It also had more “bullet time” than all three Matrix movies, combined! (“Hey! Our movie’s crap… let’s use lots of slow-motion to make it seem cool!”) Thomas Crown, on the other hand, was both entertaining and good. It had been a long time since I’d seen it and it made me want to see the 1968 original version, with Steve McQueen.

Resident Evil: Afterlife –
The Thomas Crown Affair –

Instant Replay: Football
In a couple of hours, the Ravens will face the Chiefs in today’s AFC Wild Card Playoff Game.

Stray Toasters

• In the span of less than 24 hours, we went from this to this.
  I can’t say that either event instills me with lots of hope for humanity…
  • Born, died between two tragedies
• With all of the negative news items that get posted about NFL players, it’s nice to read an article that focuses on the positive side of a player’s off-field life. What makes it even better, at least for me, is that it’s about a Baltimore Ravens player: TE Todd Heap.
• Profile Valet for Android
• 
• I (finally) picked up Call of Duty: Black Ops the other day.  I may give it a try later this afternoon or evening.
• From the “Isn’t It Ironic…?” file: US Government Strategy to Prevent Leaks, Is Leaked
• To say that I “enjoy” Cee-Lo’s Fuck You would be something of an understatement. It’s a song, with a catchy and danceable beat… and it’s just “fun.” So, what could possibly make it even more entertaining?

  Thanks to for pointing this out!

• South Sudan Poised to Create New Nation
• Can sitting too much kill you?
• The Definitive Classification System for T-Shirts

Time to find something to do (hopefully, other than shovel snow) until and get here for the football game…

Namaste.