The Young Dubliners are playing in the Knitting Factory in Spokane on Thursday night. You should be there, because they're great and I will be there, too.
I was lucky enough to see Jonathan Coulton and They Might Be Giants play in Spokane WA last Sunday. On their way to Seattle, they offered to have JoCo answer questions, and mine got answered:
This happened a while ago but I haven't gotten around to bragging about it. I love how much more "in touch" we are with everyone these days. People we've lost touch with, and new people we've never met but would like to nick a few things from their house next time they go on vacation.
Behold:
!
I like the idea of LED throwies: a small battery, magnet, and an LED taped together. The light is on until the battery runs down (takes a while with an LED), and the magnet lets it stick to something so you can throw it up high.
But the LED Throwie Rat takes the cake! It uses the same principles, but instead of tape to hold everything together it uses a taxidermied rat!
I can't get a picture out of my head of someone trying to figure out how to take one down from an overhead freeway sign.
Altered thrift-store art is too awesome to not post about! It makes me wish I had artistic talent!
I saw my first Blu-ray movie this weekend. I didn't think it'd be such a big deal, but really, it's a whole new world of clarity. Lorien had Meet the Robinsons on Blu-ray, and Costco has a Sony Blu-ray player for $70 off ($109 at checkout), so we put the two together (with our spiffy new TV) and I must say—it's pretty amazing.
The only regret I have is that now I'll want to buy everything on Blu-ray, and I already have so many DVDs…
Frank, one of my cow-orkers, introduced me to this site. At only $4, buy it for the children: 8-bit Christmas, Christmas songs with old-school video game feeling.
Apparently several attendees of PAX 2009 caught the H1N1 swine flu, or hamthrax as I like to call it. Neither Lorien nor I have any sickness symptoms. Woohoo!
This gnome would totally be worth the extra shipping cost to get it here from the U.K.!
According to this post by Richard Bartle, I'm only three handshakes away from Einstein. And only two from Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. I can only assume I'm also just two away from Roy Trubshaw and any other various virtual world developers (I'm sure Raph Koster is in there somewhere).
- I've shaken hands with Marc Singer, the actor. I saw him years ago in Seattle at a Martial Arts exhibition.
- In 2001 I met Jon "Maddog" Hall at ApacheCon. We talked about the Chinese language and he brought me a root beer.
- My mom has met Patty Duke. Actually I think she worked for her. Patty is Sean Astin's mother.
17 Jun 2009 Update: Raph Koster has met Stephen Chow. One more for the list 
There is a God in Heaven and He does love us. As proof, we get (at least, according to what Ben heard) 13 new Futurama episodes!
Looks like there are going to be 26 new episodes! For the win!
Well our new fridge is looking pretty good. We had a heck of a time getting it in place, but it's totally been worth it. First off, my dad and I drove to Spokane to the Whirlpool rep to pick it up. Due to road construction and a GPS that was giving us bad information, we had a little trouble finding the place. Getting it back to Post Falls wasn't very hard, nor was getting it off the truck. My brother Wesley came over and helped.
The first challenge was getting it up the outside steps. Wesley picked up a furniture dolly and that problem was fixed right up. The next issue was the front door—the refrigerator wouldn't fit through my front door! We ended up having to take the doors off of it so it would fit in the house! Getting the fridge up the stairs was a piece of cake, though. When I had the house built, I made the stairs 48" wide. Even after you take off space for the drywall and the handrail, I still have plenty of room to walk the fridge right up. The only problem there was it weighed 350 pounds. But between the two of us (Wesley and I) we manhandled it up. When I hit the top of the stairs, he had to split, but I didn't need any more help. I put the doors back on and wheeled the fridge into place.
Right where I encountered the next obstacle. The wall cabinet above the refrigerator space has a faceplate that drops 1.5" down from the bottom of the cabinet. The refrigerator was 1/4" too tall, so I had to plane off some of the cabinet trim. No big deal, I actually ended up using a belt sander. It made a lot of dust. Finally, everything came together, and the fridge is in place.
It's a stainless steel Whirlpool Gold 25 cubic foot with french doors and a bottom drawer freezer and ice-maker. No water or ice dispenser in the door (I'm not a big fan of those, and neither is Lorien). It's super energy-efficient, it uses less energy than a 60-watt light bulb. This isn't the exact model we got, but it's real similar (the one we have has 1' larger fridge space and 1' smaller freezer).
It sure is nice to have a way to keep things cold again. Living nearly a month without a refrigerator wasn't a lot of fun. We ended up buying a lot of groceries today so we could start filling it up again. You can see a picture of my new fridge (on my driveway) here.
Yesterday I had a brush with fame. I posted the picture of the Naturally Occurring Mr. T and tweeted it on Twitter over to Michael J. Nelson (of MST3K and RiffTrax fame), who almost immediated re-tweeted it.
This is what happened:
Woohoo!
I just hung up Eliza—you can see a picture I took with my phone at my twitter page.
Rikki must have sent it out immediately to get here so fast!