The blog is back up after some serious server problems.

• Fixed: My Web server
• Not Fixed: My Cable Modem. – So until next Monday (5/21/07) when the cable guy comes out. this page may sporadically be unavailable.

Planned upgrades over the next month:

• Moving the webserver from Novell Netware to a Linux based LAMP server.
• Upgrading WordPress to version 2.2

Hmm I also see I’ve lost some content. The last good backup I had was from last October so I’ve lost a few months worth of entries. Booooo!

If this story had not been true, it would have had the makings of a pretty good satirical piece – ‘Steve Irwin Killed by Angry Puppy’ or something like that. Unfortunately, the story was true and the world has lost an amazing individual.

Steve Irwin was, in every sense, a man who lived his life to the fullest and with the intention of making the world a better place. He was our generation’s Marlin Perkins and brought a new sense of passion to conservation. He will be missed.

There isn’t much more to say here that hasn’t already been said in countless other blogs, editorials, and news sites around the world. I will only say that Australia has been slowing inching up on my ‘Travel Destinations’ list as I’ve visited the various places listed above it over the last few years and among the many things I would have made sure I went to see, one of them would have been his zoo with the hope of actually being able to meet the man.

Good-bye Crocodile Hunter, the world mourns your passing.

Here is some amazing paper art. Not simply origami, but something which touches on it, and I think in many ways surpasses it.

Well,

I joined a team of friends for Tuesday night trivia at Vituchi’s on North Ave. Short story, we won the second round and got a $100 bar tab there. Woo!

I was never really a ‘State Fair’ type of person. I have no disdain or active dislike towards fairs, I just don’t feel any pressing need to go to them. When I was younger and in scouts, I recall going to the Wisconsin State Fair a few times, but since then it had probably been about 20 years since I had stepped foot on the grounds.

That trend seems to be changing as I’ve now gone to the State Fair three times in the last three years; Each time for the sole purpose of seeing a band. This year it wasn’t even for a nationally known act, but rather to see a local cover band called Rhythm Method. Rhythm Method is a band I discovered about 4 years ago while at Summerfest. That day I had gotten to the Summerfest grounds a bit early and had several hours to kill before any of my friends would be coming down to meet me. Looking on the schedule I saw a band called ‘Light Up’ which was billed as a Styx tribute band. Having always liked Styx (one of top 5 bands all time) , and at that time, having never seen Styx live, I figured I’d check them out. I was blown away. The singer sounded exactly like Dennis Deyoung and the band recreated the Styx sound to perfection. They sounded more like Styx than the real deal did since Styx was no longer touring with Dennis DeYoung. After their show, they mentioned that ‘Light Up’ was the named they used for their Styx Tribute show but for most of the year they went by the name of ‘Rhythm Method’ and were a 70′s and 80′s rock cover band. I made it a priority to see them in their Rhythm Method guise. They did not disappoint, and have completely changed my opinion on cover bands…in that they have set the bar in which a cover band should strive for. They are just that good.

Anyway, I went to the Wisconsin State Fair on Friday with my friend Gwenn to see Rhythm Method. She was very impressed with the show and vowed to see them again with me sometime. The fair itself was uneventful, we had no time to look at anything else, so other than drinking and eating fair food we did little beside listen to the band.

On Saturday I went to the Ozaukee County fair with a bunch of people. The itenerary there was to walk around the fair for a few hours and then go see the Demolision Derby at 7pm.

The Fair, being a county fair as opposed to state fair, was somewhat small but they did have the usual buildings full of animals so I saw my fair (pun intended) share of pigs, rabbits, chickens, ducks, horses, cows, goats, and rednecks.

The last, being a species our group actively seeks out during fairs outings as part of a drinking game. The rules of which are simple and few:

1) If you see a mullet, everyone drinks.
2) If you see a family or couple in matching outfits everyone drinks half their glass.

The girls in the group decided to play a game in addition to this one they called ‘Your new boyfriend’, which was basically finding the most redneck, or red neckish stereotype they could find and declaring that this would such and such’s new boyfriend. Ok, stupid but we were pretty drunk by the end of the day.

My highlight of the day was winning a stuffed monkey at the midway in a game of Carney pool. Carney pool is basically a regular bar-sized pool table in which there are 4 balls racked. You need run all four without missing or scratching to win.

Now I’ve been practicing my pool game quite a bit over the last 6 months or so, and for me to run 4 balls in a row (in any order) is frankly somewhat easy. I should be able to do this 75-80% of the time. One of my practice/warmup drills is to throw 4 balls on the table and then try to run them IN ORDER, and I can do this about half the time, so having to do it in any order seemed pretty easy to me.

I realize that not everyone is good at pool and that for an average person running four balls without missing is going to be somewhat difficult. Still, I wondered if the game was rigged somehow to prevent a good pool player from just cleaning the carney out. Well once I saw the pricing I realized there was no gimmick to the game. For this particular game the pricing had 4 tiers, each tier allowing you to pick a larger stuffed prize if you won; $2, $5, 10$, $20. In essence, all you were actually doing was buying the stuffed animal outright and then playing the game for the right to take it home. Whether you made all 4 or not, the Carney still had your money for a prize in which he probably paid half as much for to stock.

Still, I won on my first try and gave the prize (A stuffed monkey riding a banana) to Gwenn for her kickball team (The Drunken Monkey).

The demo derby was very fun for about the first 10 minutes, after which I became increasingly bored. Thankfully, a steady supply of beer and good company help pass the time.

I will say one thing about fairs I don’t like; The food. Well, let me rephrase that, I like the way the food tastes, I just don’t like the what it does to me. I gained almost 10 pounds over the weekend due to eating nothing but deep fried snickers, oreo cookies, cheese, nachos, burgers, brats, and various other fair goodies. Ah well, just need to make my bike rides this week a bit longer to work it off.

As a Guinness drinker and a fan of darker beers in general, The various Miller products (MGD, Lite, etc) have always tasted like water to me, so I couldn’t help but find this story quite funny.

Basically a judge ruled that a man being accused of buying beer for a minor could not be prosecuted because the prosecution could not prove that Miller MGD was in fact beer.

The Judge must be a microbrew or Guinness man. Too bad an appeals court overturned his ruling.

Also ironic is the fact that the judge’s last name is ‘Sprecher’ (as in Sprecher Breweries). Hmmm. Either this story is bogus or it’s a case of delightful coincidence

Well it’s not really a blog, or at least not a real one. It’s a satirical personal journal of President Bush, so if you get upset at things poking fun of our president, do yourself a favor and just don’t follow the link.

I happen to think it’s pretty funny and quite well done (though I think the mispellings and grammar are a bit over the top even for satire), but I know many out there will not find it funny in the least.

Here is the link to Dear Leaders Daily Thought

Well I had the first nice relaxing weekend in awhile now. No schedule, no pre-set plans or ideas, just driving up to my parents camper/trailer on the 28th and coming back on Sunday the 30th.

My good friend Evyn joined me for the weekend, which worked out well I think as she has been under some stress as of late and I think the ‘laid-back’ weekend was helpful for her as well.

As much as I tease my parents about their ‘camping’ due to their trailer which has a shower, microwave, sink, toilet, oven, refrigerator, freezer, 21″ TV, VCR/DVD, 2 easy chairs, a couch/pull-out bed, and a king sized bed, I was thankful for it this weekend due to the heat. Their trailer has air conditioning and I shudder to think how terrible the weekend could have turned out if we had to sleep in tents or had no respite from the 94+ degree weather.

I brought my telescope, guitar and amp up, Evyn brought her bocce ball set. We played an ‘improvised rules’ version of bocce ball that I’m sure would have made any self-respecting Italian man cry, but I’ll argue our version was much more fun. Since it involved a playing area with no boundaries, a beer in one hand at all times rule, and since obstacles on the playing field were allowed (including dogs), it made for a rather exciting and fun game.

I was also able to get a hand-me-down digital camera from my parents as they had just purchased a mid-range 6 megapixal model. So I finally have a digital camera. I plan on getting a nice SLR pro-sumer camera sometime in the next year, but this will hold me over until then, and at least it will allow me to start posting some pics.

On Sunday after packing, but before leaving to head back to Milwaukee, one of the local hummingbirds found my parent’s feeder and spent most of the next hour or so sipping from it for a few minutes, then flying away only to return a few minutes later to repeat the process. I tried to get a good picture of him, but he is still too untrusting of me and flew off when I tried to move in closer, here is the best shot I was able to get.

This was actually pretty funny (at least I couldn’t help laughing). Pong and space invaders done stop motion style with people seated in an auditorium. It’s better than it sounds.

Some people just have way too much time on their hands.

CORRECTION: This is not stop motion video, but rather was put together using digital processing. Still cool nonetheless.