I stopped by the hospital today and visited Lisa and the twins. I think I labeled the pictures right, but don't be surprised if Lisa tells me I have them backwards whenever she gets back online (I had the twins straight at one point, but some of the pictures on the camera are out of context).

This, by the way, is the "I may only be a day old, but I'm still really unimpressed with that camera you keep pointing at me" face.

Labels: twins

Happy Birthday to Jamie. :) You can send all of her presents to me and I'll make sure they get distributed . . .

Labels: birthdays

I've been watching Lane and Nick all weekend (and having a blast, as Lane will tell you), so I haven't had time to pop over and see the babies yet. Hopefully tomorrow. So no pictures yet. For my mother's edification, however, Alec was 5 lb. 8 oz. and Kyle was 5 lb. 9 oz. Lisa is doing great (she's planning on coming home on Tuesday). And they still haven't picked middle names (and now Scott is onboard with "Anakin" and "Kenobi").

Please congratulate Lane on the arrival early this morning of her twin sisters, Alec and Kyle Chapman. (You can also congratulate Scott and Lisa, if you feel that's appropriate.) :D Pictures coming soon.


(I would also like to point out that the twins do not, at this time, have middle names because Lisa turned that over to me and then balked when I came up with what I think are perfectly sensible middle names. I'm still not certain why she rejected "Alec Anakin" and "Kyle Kenobi." Lane and Cindy were both on board . . . *grumble*)

Labels: twins

I'm not a pagan, but I'm still going to say that, wow, did this court screw up.

I subscribe to the print edition of the World-Herald, but I quit going to the online edition when they required registration to view the articles. Registration is free, but that's not the point. When I'm clicking through links and following chains of thought through articles, hitting a wall-like page that says "Login to read this article! It's fast and free!" does nothing but irritate me, and it prevents me from hyperlinking to it (because a very small fraction of my readers will bother to get a membership and sign in). Unfortunately, it seems to be a trend. Tonight I discovered that the comments section of the Internet Movie Database now requires registering. So I guess I won't be reading any of those anymore. :P

Happy birthdays today to Ian McKellen and Frank Oz. :)

The peonies along the southern fence finally started blooming. Turns out they're all white and pink, though (not the bright colors like the earlier ones). I also have some daisies (I think), some roses and some white flowery things I don't recognize. They don't look quite like that anymore, though. I spent three hours yesterday mowing and trimming (or hacking, take your pick).

The guy in front of me at the store today bought a soda, two packages of cigarettes and an apple. I dunno, I found that amusing.

Grammar lesson of the day: Although a few sources do accept the phrase "he was hung," the accepted and preferred usage by most language authorities is that people are hanged and pictures are hung.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

Lane and I saw Episode III today, but I'm going to save my comments for a bit to avoid spoiling it for anyone (and because I'm tired and need to sleep). Hope everyone had a good weekend.

Amidst the normal menagerie of colorful characters that frequent Wal-Mart late on Friday nights, I encountered a woman who stopped me near the greeting card section with hesitant English and then simply handed me a piece of paper. At first thinking she wanted me to translate something, I stopped to help and looked at said item, which turned out to be a handwritten card that said something to the effect of "Hello, I'm a missionary from Mongolia. I'm raising money by selling magnets. If you would be interested in purchasing one, they are $15." I don't know how she got by the Wal-Mart security (oh, wait, yes I do, it was Friday night . . .), but on top of that I'm curious about the whole concept of "missionary from Mongolia coming to the U.S." I would think she'd get more mileage going to a third-world country (where the U.S. sends most of its missionaries), but then maybe she was a missionary for an Eastern religion. I dunno. In any case, I politely declined (and I had to politely decline 3 or 4 times; she was pretty insistent). I would imagine eventually she was escorted out of the store.

Seen while waiting in the drive-through line in Council Bluffs tonight:

A man in his late twenties comes out of an auto parts store and spends several minutes carefully donning, fastening and adjusting a fairly nice racing-style leather jacket, complete with matching gloves (which also have to be adjusted), then gets on a brightly colored sport bike and rides off without a helmet as I'm thinking "Well, at least the torso of your corpse won't have any road rash . . ."

So this is what Lisa heard at work yesterday after I arrived late:

Me: Sorry I'm late. I had to stop and chat with my next door neighbor when I was in the backyard taking pictures of my panties.
Lisa: Your what?
Me: My panties.
Lisa: Um, why would you do that?
Me: Because my mom wanted to see them. And they're bright and colorful.
Lisa: . . .

Turns out I need to learn to pronounce "peonies" more distinctly . . .

This part is mostly for my mom, but feel free to look anyway:
My peonies are starting to bloom, but the majority along the south fence aren't ready yet (although they're getting ready). The storms have kind of beat the hell out of my irises, but I have a few in one piece yet. And Lisa told me what these things are, but for the life of me I've forgotten already (they smell good, though, even if they are sort of taking over that side of the house . . .).

Labels: overheard

Episode III has been out for just short of 5 hours now. I know of at least one copy that was available on the Web before midnight and when I checked one of the BitTorrent sites just now there are 5 different bootleg copies online with just over 5,000 different people downloading them. :P

"masochistic judicial flagellation"

For those people who get screwed over by the legal system and like it.

Labels: proofreading

Quick recap. Let's see.

Saturday = Work for 6 hours. Failed attempt to buy a dehumidifier at Sam's Club. Introduction to Thai food with Laura's help.

Sunday = Realization that the non-powered mower I bought isn't going to work on my lawn. Comic at the Funnybone with Jamie.

Monday = Not feeling well and skipping work.

Happy Friday the 13th. :)

Not much new to report, unless you count the agreement on which I worked today that used the phrase "from the beginning of the world" as the period of time in which it wasn't liable (but if you want to go back before the formation of the solar system, I think ya got 'em).

I think it's a sign the gods or ancestors or pandimensional mice or whichever deities you prefer are unhappy at the voter turnout. Or maybe it was pressure systems. I dunno. In any case, we had a pretty good storm last night. Good enough that I unplugged my computer for the first time in almost 5 months (damn flickering power). The wind enjoyed breaking one of my terra cotta flower pots and scattering my neighbors' trash cans (and trash) all across the neighborhood (it was the night before trash pickup . . .). I amused myself by standing in my front hallway and taking pictures through the storm door. E.g., the light reflecting the rain onto my door, the street in the storm, the street with a 2-second exposure (and some car headlights) and the street with a firetruck going by.

. . . and Americans suck. "Democracy" this and "freedom" that and we only manage to come up with around a 24% voting turnout rate. A new record low (topping the previous low of 31%). Go us!

I had a very long day. After a night of no sleep I arrived at my polling place at 7 a.m. (which is next door to a school that was at least encouraging) and set about organizing my clique of grumpy draftees. My polling place is a church, which borders on amusing irony, but we clearly demarcated it as a hall of democracy with our funky Captain America-esque banners. Our tour of the facility takes us down several hallways, following the bread crumb trail of directional signs to the room in which we assembled, outside of which we posted all of the paperwork required by state and federal laws (which no one reads). Inside what, on any other day of the week, is a playroom for kindergartners (how delightfully ironic) we assembled our cheap plastic voting booths (bought used from another state when that state upgraded to nicer ones).

While my underling-er-poll workers assembled said outdated horrors, I set about the paperwork involved in unpacking, verifying and displaying the official lists of registered voters, the ballots and the ballot box. We also displayed the official precinct map of Douglas County (good luck finding anything on that disaster) and the smaller (and far more readable) map of our specific precinct (which, like most precincts I've seen, seems to have been drawn by a 3-year-old with an Etch-a-Sketch).

I also placed the polling place limit flags (supposedly at 200 feet from the entrance, but damned if I know how far 200 feet is without a tape measure). These little flags, ignored by everyone on the planet except poll workers and campaigners, denote the invisible barrier beyond which no campaigning is allowed on Election Day (thus preventing people from trying to pressure voters into voting for someone at the door of the polling place). Supposedly I have some sort of authority to eject anyone who does that, although I imagine it's mostly limited to me saying "Go away or I'll call the Election Commission," which isn't nearly as intimidating as "After I've bludgeoned you with a tire iron, can we use your blood to paint a big 'Vote Here!' sign on the street?" As the day progressed, campaigning signs would sprout like mushrooms just outside the line, eventually brushing up against (but not quite crossing) the limit flags themselves (come on, guys; do you really think you're going to sway another voter by being 2 inches closer to the door than your competitors? I have a better idea to make yourself stand out. Use a color other than blue . . .).

We were done setting up by 7:20 a.m. We sat around in silence until 7:30 (the polls don't open until 8:00). Then one of my minions asked to go on a donut run and another asked if she could run home to solve some sort of family emergency. Five minutes later, of course, the district supervisor walked in, looked at the three of us sitting there with a raised eyebrow, and asked if I was understaffed. The rest of the day was, well, dull. We had a grand total of 107 voters over a 12-hour period. So bored were we that I wandered around and took all of the above pictures. Along with some ants that were building a new colony. And some crossing guards at the school up the street. And a sign reminiscent of a previous entry (I'm loathe to poke fun at the facility that provided us with space, especially since the pastor is a very nice gentleman who was very helpful, but this typo is becoming a pattern; a plural, rather than possessive, "gods" *really* doesn't mean what the pastor thinks it means).

We had a big rush around 9:00 (all 4 people) and another around 6:30 (topping the previous record with 5). Fortunately there were no incidences of semi-inebriated voters (like last time), and the only trouble I had was one woman who "forgot" (?!) that she'd gotten married and changed her last name and was kind of unhappy when we couldn't find her in the lists under her maiden name. (Seriously, it was like "What do you mean I'm not on the list?! I've always voted here! How could I not be on the list?! Check again. *pause* Oh, wait, I forgot. I got married. Um, check under this name instead.") We started packing up around 7:30 and officially closed the polls at 8 p.m. At that point, all of the voting paraphernalia (minus the voting booths, which are actually stored in the church's garage) went into my car. Ten minutes later we arrived at the election headquarters on 114th and Dodge, where the election inspectors from every *other* precinct in the city were also converging (all of those cars are other election officials). We were organized into blocks of six cars by the Omaha police and directed, six cars at a time, to the street directly in front of the election headquarters, where packs of Boy Scouts swarmed us like pit crews at a Nascar race (here we see the block ahead of us under assault). The Scouts removed all of the voting items and delivered them to the headquarters building (without any of us getting out of our cars), and then we were moved forward and back into normal traffic by the police.

At which point I drove home and, after having been up for around 31 hours, went to bed (well, okay, I did stay up long enough to have supper, watch the storm for awhile and fall asleep on the couch).

This concludes your article on "How the voting process in America works."

Everyone go vote. Unless you don't live in Omaha. Then go buy me a couple of these.

Although I'm annoyed at science-illiterate writers trying to make things sound "cool," this is nifty nonetheless.

Yes, 42.

That is all.

A cultural exchange, if you will, regarding electrical architecture around the world (pictures courtesy of Mull).

Mull: Nice wall plate around the power socket BTW.
Me: Thanks. Those are in my kitchen now.
Mull: You brought them with you?
Me: Yeah. I bought them while I was in my apartment. They were $8 a piece, I'm damn well taking them with me. ;)
Mull: Are there no switches on those power outlets?
Me: I put the old ones back on.
Mull: No, I mean, that plate looks like there are no switches visible. I presumed you must have put the wall sockets back in. :P
Me: Switches for what?
Mull: Maybe you don't have switches on them over there... We do here. So if you plug in an appliance, it won't be immediately on.
Me: Hrm, nope, we don't have those. That's the first I've heard of it. Our outlets are always on.
Mull: Hmm, I just assumed that other countries would. I haven't seen foreign "power points" up real close before.

"It's hard to put a price on Britney Spears' urine." Um, no it's not. How about worthless?

The odd pricing at a gas station in Bridgeport (I guess they ran out of "2"s) was amusing, but I think the winner goes to something I spotted while Haley and I were passing through Broadwater (I made her turn around and take me back). I thought I was hallucinating the first time, but no, there is actually a church-turned-gun store in western Nebraska (complete with a "Welcome Hunters" sign next to the crosses).

Gather round the warm glow of the monitor, kiddies, and hear a colorful recounting of a 3-day voyage (dare I say pilgrimage?) to a distant land of strange customs and exotic landscapes.

In other words, western Nebraska.

This adventure was instigated by a sudden death in the family of the technological persuasion, as my parents' computer, on its last legs a year ago, finally gave up the ghost and descended quietly into the electronic afterlife. As my family, once reluctant to venture into cyberspace, is now enthralled (if not exactly addicted), a call to Dell was in order and an adoption was made. To avoid future hassles, I insisted on doing the set-up and installing all appropriate firewalls/antivirus/drivers, and thus my physical presence was required.

Packing for this trip posed something of a problem, as in addition to the normal items needed for such a jaunt I also transported (at my brother's polite request) a full-sized recliner (yes, I fit an entire recliner into my little car). The recliner came apart (a fact I didn't know until Haley pulled it apart while moving it from my apartment to my house), so half went in the back seat and half went in the trunk. I left on Friday afternoon (departing from my peaceful street), only to return to my house 10 minutes later because I realized that, although I had a suitcase of clothing, I'd left my shirts hanging in my closet (and really, I liked the shirt I was wearing, but not enough to wear it for three days . . .). I also had to stop by Kohl's on my way out of town because I had a $10 coupon that expired on Saturday and hey, ten bucks is ten bucks.

[Interlude: I *really* need a car CD player. Gah! Past Grand Island my radio choices were essentially two country stations or four (that's one more than last trip) religious stations, and the amusement factor of those stations wears off after about 15 minutes. By around North Platte I'm usually ready to pull over, break off my antennae and jam it through my skull. How bored was I? Bored enough to take pictures of my odometer . . .]

The computer installation went slick. Old computer moved out. New computer (including 19" monitor, which really tickled my dad) set up. DSL reconfigured. Eight pre-loaded programs deleted (AOL; bleh). Complete Norton suite installed. Address book and messages migrated. Firewall configured. Old games reinstalled. Camera software installed. MSN and iTunes installed for Haley. Financial spreadsheet reconstructed for my mom. Etc. My parents have two printers (an old one for printing papers and a new photo printer) and my dad asked me to hook up both of them, but the geniuses who built the photo printer apparently decided that hooking it up to a computer is optional and didn't include a connecting cable, so it had to wait until Saturday when I could pick up a USB hub and another USB cable. They seem pretty tickled with the setup, and it should last them awhile (probably not 6 years though, mom). I also gave them a crash course in identify theft because someone they knew had fallen for a scam.

On Saturday I tagged along with my mom and Haley to help Linde move out of her apartment ("tagged along" in this case meaning "Haley and I did most of the heavy moving and strapping"). There was a slight "incident" that left Linde in what one could call a "foul mood," involving a 20-year-old cardboard and plastic bookcase that really was not meant to be an heirloom fragmenting into pieces as Haley and I were loading it. Linde seemed somewhat peeved when she "discovered" (way to go, Hay) that the bookcase, rather than being loaded in the back of the truck, was nestled comfortably in the nearest dumpster, a situation culminating in Linde and my grandmother retrieving the bookcase, reassembling it in front of the dumpster and putting it in my grandmother's car "to keep it away from the people throwing away my stuff!" I think Linde is getting five different bookcases from five different people for Christmas this year.

After the loading was complete, everyone stood around and marveled at how much Nebraska clothing they were wearing without even coordinating.

On Saturday night I visited with my grandparents for a couple of hours and then finished installing the printers. I also wrestled with my mom's Scrabble program for almost 40 minutes (it had a firewall conflict that kept locking up the program).

Sunday I stopped by my brother's house (notice the "his and hers" recliners . . .) and then the current project on which my dad and brother are working (an ambulance storage building for the hospital). Judging by the work site, I think my dad is going to expand his business into "creative burial options" ('cause really, what better way to honor and remember a loved one than to cast them into the foundation of an important building?).

I also did some tech support on Linde's computer (moving a hard drive from her old computer into a "newer" one), although the spectators (i.e., my dad) seemed less impressed with my tech skills and more amused at my inability to open the damn case on one of them (does every single computer manufacturer *have* to try to be creative in how their cases open and close?).

The drive back was, of course, mind-numbingly boring. But here I am. :)

If you like strangely gyrating women covered in motor oil, well, have I got a treat for you. I think Shakira's mutant power is the ability to move any single part of her body while leaving the entire rest of her body motionless. Not that useful against evil robots or supervillains, but it makes for an amusing video. (Of course, the video is in Spanish, so I have no idea what the song itself is about. Maybe women in motor oil.)

I found the full-screen version of this using BitTorrent, but I doubt any of you want to download a 170MB file. Instead, go check out the smaller version of "A Hero Falls," the music video of John Williams' new Star Wars music. Woooo, look at all the lightsaber battles!