This story really cracked me

This story really cracked me up! Gotta love the Weekly World News!

I'm back at work. I

I'm back at work. I was here yesterday too. It was extremely hectic. Today won't be much better. This is the punishment for taking vacation.

I saw View From the

I saw View From the Top today. Fun movie, a little on the saccharine side, but hey, I could watch Gwyneth Paltrow do her taxes for two hours and find it entertaining. It's a bit of a strange movie, but good, overall. Here's Ebert's review.

Someone buy the networks a

Someone buy the networks a thesaurus. I'm already sick of "shock and awe" and "embedded".

We made a trip to

We made a trip to Death Valley yesterday, and I took some digital pictures. I'm happy to report that we all made it out okay, and that even in March, it was already on the warmish side there.

This is a flower on a cactus:

This is a crazy old timer who looks after the Rhyolite ghost town. Behind him is a house built entirely out of bottles and mud, back around 1906 or so. Rhyolite used to have thousands of residents, with three different rail lines connecting to the town. Now, it only has him:

This is a part of Death Valley known as the "Artist's Palette" due to the number of different minerals near the surface, giving it so many colors:

This is Badwater, in Death Valley. They were re-doing the whole parking lot area, and there was really no place to stop, as the whole road there is under construction, but the yellow arrow in the picture is pointing at a sign marking sea level, so you can see we were well below it:

It's easy to forget how

It's easy to forget how the "other half" lives. You know, the people without broadband? I've been on this 26,400 baud connection for about 24 hours now, and it sucks. Things I do in seconds now take hours, and some are just about impossible. For instance, I put up a couple of 9MB TIF files on my web site before I left, but the person who is supposed to retrieve them can't, and asked me to just convert them to JPG and e-mail them. No problem, except that it'll take me 3 hours to download the files so I can convert them. Fortunately, a friend back at UNI is doing it for me, where it takes merely seconds, rather than hours...

The virtual garage sale continues,

The virtual garage sale continues, now with a Betty Crocker Magic Mini Muffin Maker!

I just helped my parents

I just helped my parents put their Zane Grey collection up on eBay, if you like Western books.

Don't ask me why, but

Don't ask me why, but AOL has a local dialup number for Sandy Valley now, so I can dial-in from out here, and am setting my parents' computer up with AOL now too, they can just use my account, as I only use it when I travel. Unfortunately, their crappy phone lines are getting 28.8K at best, so it's not exactly speedy, but it's better than nothing!

I'm at my parents' house

I'm at my parents' house in Sandy Valley, Nevada/California. The state line runs right through the middle of this valley, our house is about 3 miles from this dude ranch, in case you're in need of a hokey wedding location.

It's been raining for the last couple days here, and is somewhat cold. It was honestly much nicer in Minneapolis than it is here, but I'm sure the weather will improve soon.

Well, I made it to

Well, I made it to Vegas. Now for some shut-eye, it's 3:28 a.m. for me, biologically.

I'm in Chicago now, dialed

I'm in Chicago now, dialed in via my cell phone, to check e-mail and post this. Our plane is boarding, but I always wait until the end to get on, I don't see any reason to disconnect my laptop from power early! Also, one of the women in line is apparently saying goodbye to her dog over her cell phone. People are strange.

Oh, and am I the only human who doesn't have to concentrate to calculate time zone differences in my head? It seems that way, I'm always traveling with someone who doesn't understand how they work, or something...

I'm in the Minneapolis-St. Paul

I'm in the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, using their wireless internet connection to 'blog this. My flight leaves in about 45 minutes for Midway Airport in Chicago, where we'll pick up some more passengers before heading on to Vegas.

For those morbidly interested, I'm going to be on AirTrans (ATA) Flight 111 from Minneapolis -> Midway -> Vegas, and you can track it here in real-time.

I've never flown on this airline before, and if for some reason I don't survive, consider that a negative review. :)

After an extremely hectic week,

After an extremely hectic week, I'm on the road. First stop, Minneapolis! I made it up here last night, in time to have tasy burgers at J Dylan's mom's house for his birthday yesterday, then we caught Seth Mulvihill's band playing at the Uptown Bar, then we came home, I stole his cable modem connection to use on my laptop, and then crashed on his futon.

My flight to Vegas doesn't leave until 7:47 tonight (on ATA, which I've never flown). So, we've got some time to run around today. I've heard that they have Pepsi in glass bottles up here, and I'm going to stock up on them, so I can haul them back to Iowa with me when I return.

I also saw a Jimmy John's last night, near the bar, which means I can't leave Minneapolis until I eat there.

So, I've got 5 days

So, I've got 5 days to get my tech gadgets ready for my trip to Vegas. So much to do, so little time. My iPaq has gone dead, meaning everything saved to it, is lost, AGAIN. This happens every time I neglect it for a couple weeks, the batteries go completely dead, and your data goes "Poof!". I hate when I let it do that! So now I have to reinstall all the programs on it that I want to take with me. That's not so bad, but, I need to make new GPS maps for the Las Vegas area, as well as Minneapolis - St. Paul to use with my GPS receiver for it. Navigation of unfamiliar cities is much easier when you have a little map showing you exactly where you are. I used to know my way around Vegas quite well, but I fear much of the knowledge has been purged from my brain, so I have JD use my iPaq w/GPS to back me up, in case we get lost.

I've also got to get my trusty Dell Latitude C640 ready to travel, and stockpile some DVDs for the plane rides ahead of me. That shouldn't be too bad, I need to make sure my AOL client is up to date too, there's nothing worse than getting away from your broadband connection, only to find that the last beta version of AOL that you loaded to your laptop is no longer able to connect to the service, so you have to find the closest Wal-Mart and scrounge up one of those ever-present CDs.

This will also be my first trip where I'll attempt to use my new wireless data connection via my SprintPCS cell phone. I've tested it with the laptop, and it works well, faster than dial-up even, but I've never gotten it to let me check my e-mail via the IMAP protocol, so it limits me to web-based e-mail. And, the few times I used it, it tended to kick me off after a few minutes.

I also need to check out the digital camera battery situation. Either one of my batteries, or one of my chargers has gone dead. Fortunately, I have two of each, for exactly this reason. You can never be too prepared. If I take the PCMCIA reader from my printer along with me, I can offload pictures on the laptop, without needing a larger USB flash card reader.

It's all about planning ahead, and hoping that airport security doesn't pick you out for the tedious spot check. I carry so many electronics in my laptop backpack that I'm sure it looks suspicious on the X-ray machines, and watching the security guards of dubious intelligence attempting to turn on all my devices gets old fast.

I had a very busy

I had a very busy weekend. My sister-in-law Karen came, with her fiance Pete, to stay with us. My friend J Dylan came down as well. While Holly enteretained her sister, and future brother-in-law, JD and I drove down to Monticello, Iowa on Saturday afternoon to take part in a surprise 30th birthday party for his sister. Much fun was had, and we played a lot of "Catchphrase" which is a good party game. I told her she's definitely getting old, as the party had broken up by 9:30 p.m.

Now, I have a hectic week ahead of me, at least 4 meetings to attend, and I need to get as much done as possible, as I'm leaving for Vegas next Saturday. Kristin, my student assistant, is gone too, as her grandfather passed away Thursday, so I'll be on my own getting all this work done.

I'm trying out NewzCrawler as

I'm trying out NewzCrawler as my new posting tool, let's see if it works!  Hmm, a bit flaky... come on, work!

It's posting the items to Blogger, but not causing Blogger to publish them to my weblog. I've submitted a support request to NewzCrawler, let's see where this goes...

Ooooh! Pack up the car,

Ooooh! Pack up the car, we're going to Algona, to see the world's biggest Chee-to! I can't believe some "journalist" spent his time on this article, is there no "real" news to report today?

And really, why would you want a giant Chee-to? Every time I eat them, I feel like Midas, because whatever I touch for the rest of the day turns a tasty golden orange. Cool Ranch Doritos are better, not as messy, and it gives you a superpower: Toxic Breath.

Wow, this is America? Talk

Wow, this is America? Talk about free speech violation, this lawyer was arrested for wearing a T-Shirt that read "Give Peace A Chance" in a local mall. The kicker, is that he bought the shirt at said mall.

Okay, now, he is guilty of trespassing, if he refused to leave the mall when asked, as it's private property. But, why did they ask him to remove his shirt? As I read the article, he could have stayed in the mall, if he removed the shirt, which must mean that it was his shirt which was offensive, not his actions, so I don't buy the mall's line about him being "disruptive".