Category: Uncategorized

Had another Leadership Buffalo thing on Wednesday, this one taking me on a tour of Elmwood and the Cobblestone district. The Elmwood tour was held by “the Buffalo Rising guy“, who appears to be the de facto mayor of the street. Every human we passed on the sidewalk and several of the people in cars stopped to say ‘hello’, and to ask with eyebrow raised what he was doing, the inference being, ‘what are you doing with these squares?’.

Want to see the shells of the lofts being built next to the arena, or just can’t get enough pictures of Alex? Check it out.

On Tuesday night, six men met in a darkened room to compete for glory. The fundraiser was a success in that it actually took place, the tech stuff all worked, people had a good time, and decent money was raised. It was a failure in that only seven people showed, but rumor has it the first iteration of an event like this is always poorly attended. I have many ideas for next time, so we’ll see if I can’t make this something a little bigger. If you’re interested, my man Del has some pics up of the event — well, the set-up for the event, anyway.

In addition to the many fine folks who donated prizes, Bungie sent a box full of knick-knacks. I ended up with this little red dude as part of my 2nd place prize. Now Rooster* lives in my office, and I’m just not sure what to do with him. I feel he needs to be on display, both to up my geek cred (a necessity, since I dress like a management stooge and have to work with the IT guys) and to advertise for the next event. But where, and doing what? I am accepting suggestions.

*10 B A Start points to anyone who can guess why I named him that.

One of those true rarities, a post on webshite, has occurred. Greg reviews Kingdom Hearts 2, which continues the series of games set in the various Disney universes. Personally, I’m looking forward to KH3, in which Sora, Goofy, and Donald fight evil in the realm of the Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit.

Decades from now, some desperate grad student will write a thesis on the new social archetypes which started with the pantheon of characters from 80’s TV ads. You may remember the post on the Noid — today we discuss the pink bunny with the drum. He’s entered my conscious thought a few times recently, as follows.

Elliott Smith refers to this ever-drumming automaton in his song Rose Parade, a depiction of someone too much of a mopey, self-involved coke addict to enjoy a parade.

“They asked me to come down and watch the parade
and to march down the street like the duracell bunny“.

This morning on NPR, some dude — sorry, “listener commentator” — was bitching about the national debt.

“Like the Duracell bunny it just keeps on going”.

Here’s the thing: it’s the Energizer Bunny. I mean, I know Duracell has more name recognition, but come on. It must drive the Energizer marketing people crazy.

Here’s another thing. Apparently, there are Duracell bunnies, at least according to Wikipedia. These are not, though, the bunnies in question.

Sabres. Going to the playoffs, but that slump was not so good. I read this article on the topic, and will provide for you now a fairly disturbing quote from Ryan Miller:

“It’s not panic mode,” Miller cautioned. “I don’t think it’s been terrible. It’s been less than stellar, but I don’t think it’s any reason to go change everything and start sacrificing live animals.”

I have to agree, Ryan. No reason whatsoever to start sacrificing live animals, or even dead ones for that… wait, what the hell are you talking about? To whom? What dark gods of hockey would be appeased by this nefarious act? Whatever unholy alliance you have formed with these beasts-who-are-not-of-God, I’m going to assume they would be more happy with a sacrifice of Tim Horton’s and Coffee Crisps. The Canadians I know always want my “Yankee cigarettes” — perhaps a few cartons of those would help.

Bored with your Rhapsody station? Ipod getting monotonous? I recommend a trip over to edge.ca’s streaming service page and checking out “Edge 2”. Unless you’re Alan Cross himself, I’d be pretty surprised if you don’t hear something you’ve never heard before. Unsurprisingly, many of the tunes I heard today were typical Cross choices — the new wave stuff that girl in high school who you thought was a wacko but now realize was really cool listened to while she spent study hall sitting by herself drawing freaky designs in her composition book — but they were satisfyingly interspersed with non-eyeliner stuff. Happy hunting.

You know the archetypal image of two men carrying a large, fragile, thin rectangle down a city street? Like a mirror, pane of glass, or painting? A new incarnation of this classic appeared on the sidewalk the other day as I drove home from work. I saw the two guys. I saw the oversized rectangle. It took me a moment to see, though, that it was a big honkin’ plasma TV.

Is it too late for me to change my signature? My written one, I mean.

About fifteen years ago I was impressed into signing my name several hundred times in a row. By the end of that, the sig had gone from a 14-letter scrawl to an unintelligible scribble. What happens if I decide to change how I do it? Let’s say I do some drills for a week or so to make sure the new style is consistent. What happens on the rare occasions someone checks the back of my credit card? Would they believe me?

Always did have a problem with names. In my various writing projects throughout the years, I have consistently dreaded the moment at which I must choose a name for a person or a place, the cursor blinking at me as if the computer was drumming its fingers. I used the same first name for the main character in the last several stories I’ve put to paper (or whatever the modern equivalent of that idiom should be. Wait a minute, isn’t that what writers are for? Let’s just call it “put to text” for now) . Ages ago I was in an online writer’s group hosted by an author, and on Q&A day the only question I had was how he picked names. It’s a bit of an issue.

So, here I am writing something new, and trying to hoard words that make good place names. (Serenity and Firefly are littered with superior examples: Whitefall, Maidenhead, etc.) Over the last few days, it’s become something of an OCD-freakout. Every written word, every song lyric, every combination of phonemes I’ve exposed to has been put to the test. Eating Lay’s potato chips? “Classic Station…”. Listening to music? “Tourbus Station…”. Blogging? “Dashboard Station…”. So, if you see me and notice a glazed-over look as you’re speaking, don’t be concerned. When I make my millions, I’ll give you a dime if I use a shard of your vocab as a place name.

Shard Station…

Damn it, Nintendo. You came frighteningly close to changing the world.
Why? “Why?” I ask you. Why could you not go the extra step? You make the DS. You give it a touch screen and some decent processing power. You wave that special wand of yours, the one that has “The Breaker of Ground” etched down the side, and bless the thing with wireless connectivity.

Visions of people on subways having pick-up games of Mario Basketball during their commutes, of people at coffee-shops wi-fiing it up to race against their friends in Budapest, Lima, and Des Moines, of heply-dressed urban teens walking down clean sidewalks with your machines in their long hands flickered in your eyes. A gaming revolution.

As what I assume must have been a throw-away feature, you toss in Pictochat, the software that sets up local chatroom so kids can IM each other during recess. And here’s where you flub it up. You can now compose messages on your handheld device, but the wi-fi doesn’t work for it. Users can’t IM each other over the internet. I can type up an email, but can’t send it to anyone.

I’ve done a decent amount of composition on PDAs. It’s great — you can get a few lines down wherever you are. My PDA went all fritzy recently and had to be sent to the Heaven of Broken Electronics That An Unmarried Geek Would Keep In a Box Somewhere But A Married Geek Throws Away. And here I am with a handheld electronic device with a primitive word processor on it, and damned if I want to keep what I write. One half as expensive as a PDA, and which runs games with great awesomeness. I’m not even asking that you put a calendar etc. in there (which of course you should). Just unlock the stuff you’ve already got.

Fie on you, Nintendo.