Pieworks trivia night - Rapscallions in second place

Tonight, Katie and I went over to Pieworks Pizza on E. Kings across from Centenary to have some pizza and play trivia. Taylor's been going for a few weeks, and asked last week if we wanted to go, but we had already committed to going to the parents to pick up the plutinator (who was staying with them for a few days).

Last week at Trivia night Taylor laid the family smack down, with the help of another family - the McCormick's - who lived in our neighborhood growing up, and ended up winning the trivia night and getting a free pizza. So, this week, we were expecting another good showing.

Half of last week's team broke off into their own team this week, leaving Me, Katie, Taylor and Jay Michael to fend for ourselves.... and we did pretty good. We ended up with 73 points at the end of the night, compared to the winning team's 81.... we were in second place.

Anywho, we had a good time, enjoyed some good pizza and ended up winning a free dinner for two at pieworks. We'll be back next week with an equally ridiculous name and a drive to win big.

Organs in popular music

I was in the car the other day (used so frivilously that my wife's face turns red in anger when I use it) with Taylor when my ipod semi-randomly played Al Green's 'Love and Happiness'. We talked about how great of a song it was, and I said that it was the most effective use of an organ in a song. After that point I started taking notice of songs with organs in them, and have to say that it's almost automatic that I'll like a song given a good organ in the background.

Al Green - Love and Happiness
Iron Butterfly - In-a-gadda-da-vidda
Cranberries - No Need to Argue
John Mayer - Gravity
Spencer Davis Group - I'm a man

That's my short list of songs that effectively use organs.

It was the flu

After leaving work Tuesday because of a stomach bug, I developed a slight cough. That cough turned into a hacking cough and leaky nostrils. That hacking cough gave me a headache. That headache just left this morning.

So, in retrospect, the bug I caught Tuesday was most likely the flu, or I caught a stomach bug which weakened my immune system enough to let the flu in. Either way, I thought I was getting better Wednesday, then Thursday I attempted putting in a full work day. I abandoned ship on that plan at 3, and bailed into bed. When I woke up I clocked my fever doing 101.9.

I'm just starting to get back to normal today, and if it was in fact the flu I'll still be contagious for a few more days.

On a completely related note, after letting myself fall into disrepair for a week, I'm no longer sick enough to ignore the fact that I need a shave, haircut and a haircombing. I also realized while examining myself in the mirror that I think I trimmed my nosehairs this weekend... SON OF A GUN. That's why I got sick. I removed my first and strongest line of defense! I won't be doing that again anytime soon. Sorry Katie.

Movable Type Upgrade

I'm a little behind the times on the version of movable type I'm running on the blog here... movable type being the software I use to make posts on this here blog. Since the flu (or the worst cold I've ever had) got me last week and won't let go, I decided to start taking steps to upgrade to movable type 4.1, backing up the site, backing up the database, and downloading the latest version... and now I'm finally done with all that.

I'm going to go ahead with the upgrade. Lord willing and the creek don't rise, I'll be here posting again shortly on an improved blogging engine.

I'm coming, Elizabeth!

Yesterday morning I had to leave work because I apparently had some kind of west nile ninja stomach virus. If it weren't for my super human napping abilities, yesterday would've been more unpleasant than the stomach virus intended. I slept for a good 6 hours from 10-6:30, only to be interrupted by failed attempts to sneak something into my stomach, or a call by my stomach to rush, post-haste to the restroom.

Today, I took off work again just to make sure my fever had broken, and that I wouldn't have a relapse after getting some food in the ol' tank. So far, so good. However, as I sat down to eat my chicken noodle soup, I noticed that Katie had opened the mail that came yesterday. The first bill of which was the gas bill... for $283. I clutched my chest Fred Sanford style and prepared for the big one.

I really can't imagine how we used 22,000 cubic feet of natural gas... in a 1500 sq. ft. house where we turn down the temperature when we leave. We've got some investigating to do. I guess we'll see about getting more insulation... quickly and try to find the age of the furnace. Hopefully, we'll find a way to curb the cost.

Concerts on DVD... I'll give 'em a try

My brother bought an Amazon gift card for Katie and I for Christmas this year, and until I got an antenna for the HD tv, I didn't really have an idea of what to buy with the money. You see, LPB (local pbs station) was broadcasting the Crossroads Guitar Festival on their HD over-the-air station, which I was able to pick up with my new antenna.

I watched most of it, and was really impressed, especially by Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton's performances together at the end of the show. Based on what I saw I bought the Crossroads Guitar Festival DVD from Amazon.

I went back and watched it one night when Katie went to a wedding and found a song that I'd missed when I first watched it. Little by Little, performed by Susan Tedeschi is probably my new favorite. Take a gander at the following video.

After seeing performances like this, and also seeing a Dave Mathews concert DVD, I think I may start renting more concert DVD's. I've sworn off attending concerts, or at least large rock concerts, but I still enjoy the live performances... so this may be perfect. Anyway, I thought I'd share the video and the epiphany about the concert DVD's.

Cugino's Chicken Enchilada Soup Mix

One of our neighbors was kind enough to bring a big container of chicken tortilla soup over to us the day after we moved in. It was a very thoughtful gesture since we were in the middle of unpacking boxes and hooking up our electronics, and also turned out to be pretty stinkin' tasty.

So, when Katie was in Canton, TX the week before last, and she saw a booth selling chicken enchilada soup mixes, she bought one. I thought I'd share the website of the company that sells them since it was so good. The brand was Cugino's, and the soup mix is $5.

Once you've got the mix, you just add some tomato paste and chicken (canned chicken or otherwise cooked). Then you're left with a tasty soup to which you should add tortilla chips, sour cream and cheese.

Amazon Web Services - how did I miss the impact?

Photo by: Randy Cox

Amazon.com, the internet retailer, launched a set of web services way back in 2002. For those unfamiliar with the term 'web service', it generally refers to a program running on a computer somewhere on the internet that you ask to perform some task, then return the result to you over the internet as well. So, it's just like it sounds, a service performed by a computer over the web...

I heard about the launch of Amazon's web service, and have heard smatterings of talk since then when a new service is launched, but never paid much attention until I saw their payment service. So, with this service, you create an account with amazon and pass them payment information over the web and they send a response back to you indicating the status of that payment. It's like a merchant account for credit card processing.

Anywho, I had an idea a few weeks ago that the family think tank didn't quite understand. Taylor understood what I was trying to get at, but I wasn't explaining my idea in terms the family could understand. The idea was basically human, distributed OCR (optical character recognition - the process of turning a computerized image into text).

I would write a program to break an image (a scanned document) into words or lines and present those randomly to humans on the internet. Each person would be presented with a small portion of that image that contains a word or sentence and would type what they read in a box below it. If after a certain number of people have seen that portion of the image, and agree that it says the same thing that section of the image would be assigned that value. After the image's pieces have all been converted and agreed on, I could piece the document back together and have a text value for the document.

Today, after looking around at their web service offerings, I found a service called Amazon Mechanical Turk, which allows you to break down tasks and submit them to Amazon, who will in turn assign them to a global group of workers. One of the companies using that service offers an optical character recognition service to turn document images back into text.

I'm still trying to find whether there's any way to turn some of my ideas into feasible options with services like these. Two of the ideas I ran past the family within the last fews months seem more attainable now, but still not necessarily workable. I don't plan on quitting my day job as a programmer (or my night job as a lazy husband), but like to toy around with spare time money makers.

While my nosehairs gently weep

Today, like most days, Katie and I took Pluto for a walk around the nieghborhood. We've been trying to get him accustomed to walking in the neighborhood without dragging us around like he's an ox dragging a plow, and the best way to accomplish that is by building healthy walking habits. So, apart from early this week we've been pretty regular about taking him on walks around the neighborhood and in the park.

So, this afternoon, we leashed him up and took him around the block and when we got back to the house we decided to cut him a little slack on the leash and let him run around in the yard a bit. He did great. He pulled a bit on Katie, but not like the eye bulging, whining, manic version of himself that scared the women and children in the neighborhood a month ago. He almost looked like a normal dog on a walk... until we let him have some slack.

He found himself a big pile of cat poo in the front yard and buried his nose in it. After determining that "Yes, this is the stinkiest substance I have ever laid my nose on", he flopped down into it and rolled himself around like it was aromatic gold.

Katie drug pluto inside where I had a bowl of food ready for him. She couldn't stand the smell, and was making gagging noises, so I rolled my eyes and took the leash from her. After all, how bad could it be? It's just cat poo. Give me that leash you silly woman... with your frail senses. I'll handle the poo smells around here!

Within seconds my nosehairs were threatening mutiny. It was, even after I've had several hours to think about it, the worst smell I've ever encountered. Wet, hot dog smell, topped in fresh cat poo. I just got a shiver... seriously.

Anywho, I let the dog eat as long as I could stand it, then drug him to the bathroom. Water was running when he got in the room, and he knew what was coming. We had treats, shampoo and running water and he was cornered in the room where he drinks from the porcelain bowl and gets yelled at... that's trouble. He received the least gentle bath of his life, and maybe the most gratifying for Katie and I.

Pluto got more than he bargained for tonight, and Katie and I got a lesson in plutology. He's a dog. If there's dirt, he's going to dig and track it in the house. Food, he's going to try to sneak it. Crotches, you better believe they're gettin' a sniffin'. We just have to outsmart him, exercise him and make sure he's not given the opportunity to get near dirt, food, crotches, and now cat poo.

We're learning... and preparing I'd say. Bring on the kids. Baby poo...? you've got nothing on cat poo on a dirty dog.