Wednesday
Day Two of “Damage Control.” It went well. The people whom I contacted yesterday seemed to be rather understanding of our problems. *whew* I still have a few more people to contact, but I’m a lot less stressed than I was 24 hours ago.

After work, I met up with a few friends for an impromptu coffee night – it was the right night (this week was a beer week, though); but most of our group went to see They Might Be Giants perform. Tonight’s conversation ranged from comics to Lakota rituals to meeting Mark Hamill. After that, we headed to Applebee’s for dinner. As the hostess seemed to be in a bit of a mood, we weren’t able to sit in Vivi’s section. *BAH* She came over to visit us, though. And had the entire table laughing.

Song of the Day
Les Poissons from The Little Mermaid Original Soundtrack

Stray Toasters

  • I was chatting with a friend from back home and he told me that a student of his went into a local sports card store and asked if they sold Magic: the Gathering cards. The owner of the shop went into the back and returned with an unopened box of Alpha cards. (For those of you who don’t grok that: First edition and first printing of the game.) The owner had bought them when the game first came out… but they didn’t sell, so he just put them in his back stock. He sold them to the kid for twenty ($20) dollars! The kid and/or his father put the cards up for auction on eBay. As of the last price that I could find (Sept. 2000), an unopened box was worth $2800.
  • RIAA’s got subpoenas…. TechTV’s got the names. Are you one of them?
  • VH1’s 200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons. The complete list is about 2/3 of the way down the page.
  • Sacre bleu!
  • Digitized Gutenberg Bible Available
  • Microsoft… losing a patent battle? Seems so. Check it out.
  • Hmmm. I’m a little disturbed/irritated. I just saw an ad from Partnership for a Drug-Free America. It showed roughly 20 goldfish swimming in a water-purifying jug – like a Brita jug that you’d fill with tap water to purify. The tap was open and water was draining out of the jug. As you can expect, the fish were trying to swim in an ever-decreasing amount of water. When it got to the level of the spout, it stopped draining…. but there was only about 2-3 inches of water in the jug. As you can imagine, the fish were more-or-less on top of each other just trying to survive. There was a voiceover about using inhalants and how that destroys brain cells which are necessary for us to live. I don’t remember exactly how it went, but that was the gist of it. Somehow, I think that they could have found a better way to get the point across.
  • A new Cheech & Chong movie? Yep.

Tomorrow is “Pioneer Day” here in the Land behind the Zion Curtain. Or, as calls it: “Mormon Christmas.” (I have to admit: That makes me laugh.) This is the day when (almost) everyone celebrates the Mormon pioneers coming to the Salt Lake Valley and Brigham Young saying “This is the place.” It’s a state holiday – some businesses will be closed, some will close early. This holiday gets more fanfare and hullabaloo than the Fourth of July here. Call me a “Colony snob” if you want – being from one of the original thirteen colonies/states – but I still don’t think that a state holiday should outshine the federal one. *shrug* Nevertheless, I’m going to watch the fireworks display tomorrow night. NEVER pass up an opportunity to see a good fireworks display.

And with that, bon soir.

Namaste.