My Grandmother (Grams for short) is pretty cool. She called me last night and informed me that she was watching Walker, Texas Ranger - one of her favorite shows. Now I know a lot of us talk the talk about how kick ass Chuck Norris is, but how many of us actually sit down and watch him roundhouse kick other people on a regular basis? I know I don't. But my devoted Grams does and for that I admire her. Just remember, the Transformers went into hiding following the 80s since they had heard that Chuck Norris had killed off all of the Go-Bots.
AI was on last night. It was a weird night, but I think the competition is finally to the higher level where all 5 singers that are left are worthy of a CD. And once again, Paula seemed drunk or high, take your pick. I was hoping that Paris would select one of Paula's songs to sing since she had the task of finding a good piece to sing from 1988. She chose Kiss by Prince which everyone that reads this knows is my song and my song only! I think the video is still out on my work webpage of me doing karaoke to that.
My ranking from last night:
Katharine
Chris
Taylor
Elliott
Paris
We'll have to see later tonight. I do wish I could be on American Idol now and only for the sole purpose of wanting to hear Paula's commentary and every time she stutters, I would interrupt her by saying "what?" or "huh?" That'd be pretty funny. I wouldn't last long I'm sure. I'm not TV pretty remember?
The second step in my simple landscaping project is done. I filled up my garbage container with the grass and dirt that I dug up last night. We'll see how pissed off the garbage guy is today when they come around to collect. So you can now tell where I'm planting my flowers that are coming this weekend (I think). I need to make the area square and maybe dig the hole a little deeper - probably tomorrow night. Then I am ready for the liner and edging material to be laid out. Then hopefully have some nice flowers planted this weekend. I'll take pictures when all is said and done, don't worry.
Quick Sports talk - NBA had some good games with a lot of teams going up 3-2 in the series (Heat, Nets, Spurs) and Phoenix not ready to fold yet against the evil Lakers. We'll see what happens to finish up the first round but no huge surprises yet. NHL - it's interesting how in the Eastern Conference, the 1, 2, 3, and 4 seeds all advanced to the 2nd round. And if Anaheim can win game 7 on the road in the Western Conference, the 5, 6, 7, and 8 seeds will all advance. Interesting, interesting. I think Hockey is the one sport where home ice really doesn't matter in the playoffs.
Song of the Day - back to AI, I can't stand Mary J. Blige's Be Without You since it's on the radio every 5 minutes. I did think it was funny to hear Renegade and it's honestly still stuck in my head. I don't think it's that great of a song but I do think Styx had some other good songs that I might go check out today on iTunes.
Video of the Day - Close call on a dude speeding through an intersection. Not sure what he was thinking but makes you wonder how lucky the guy that was actually paying attention was. Probably some high school girl on a cell phone that didn't see the red light.
Webpage of the Day - this made me laugh. Thanks Christine!
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
A Blog 100% Filled With Immigrants Today
Yesterday was Immigration/Deportation Day. It should have been Deportation Day. My team here at IBM celebrated by showing up for an 8+ hour work day even though we have an Irish guy, a German guy, a co-op born in Jamaica, an immigrant from Iowa, and wherever Peep Show's background is from. Yes, I am the immigrant all the way from Iowa, but I decided to work yesterday.
I don't get what the "Day Without Immigrants" was for even though I've read article after article about it the past couple of days. If you're here illegally.... you are a criminal. I wouldn't expect to get full benefits if I just decided to up and move to Ireland, although I would expect after a while I would become a Guinness Brewmaster. How cool would that be? What does it take to earn the title of "Brewmaster"? Something for me to look up today.
Speaking of Deportation...... The Detroit Red Wings need to deport Manny Legace after the idiot single-handedly gave Edmonton the series last night. How the #@)$(*#@$@#$ does someone give up 4 goals in the third period? Manny needs to stay away from Detroit for a while otherwise he's likely to be knocked off for being such a shitty goal tender. Edmonton did play well but Detroit played like crap. It'll be interesting to see who comes back next year as Chelios is 44 and Yzerman is 40 with multiple injuries that keep him from being 100%. Legace has head injuries and probably could be diagnosed as legally blind after I watched him last night.
American Idol tonight - I will be able to watch since there are no more rehearsals. And I can vote too! Still think it's ironic that more people vote for AI in 2 hours every week than we have every 4 years for our president of the United States (with polls open all day long). Maybe our voting people should take marketing lessons from Fox???? or not. I respect the position of "American Idol" more than the other one. And I'm still somewhat following The Apprentice. With crybaby now gone (and Tarek who I thought might actually win the thing). So not sure what's going to happen but I do like the expressions that Carolyn gives in the board room that basically shows us that she doesn't think anyone is deserving of winning this thing. They need to do some serious work next year to save this show.
And the last thing I forgot about mentioning late last week is the new Nintendo has a new, but weird, name. Wii (pronounced "we"). It's unusual, but instead of calling it Revolution that everyone kind of liked and was getting used to, Nintendo came up with Wii as a way of telling us that we're all kids at heart. Or that no matter how cool it will be, wii can't spell English words correctly. I wonder how long till the Spanish community starts marketing it as "Nintendo's nosotros" since everything else seems to revolve around them this week.
Song of the Day - Um..... In honor of Deportation Day, I'm bringing back a timeless classic. Don't Go Away Mad (Just Go Away). That sums up my feelings pretty well.
Video of the Day - It's coming - and I'm pumped! So Dark The Con Of Man!! I still think everyone should read the book before going to the movie but I know that won't happen. Takes about 2 days to read the book if you have a weekend you're not doing anything.
Webpage of the Day - Girlspeak to English Dictionary. Where has this been my whole life?
I don't get what the "Day Without Immigrants" was for even though I've read article after article about it the past couple of days. If you're here illegally.... you are a criminal. I wouldn't expect to get full benefits if I just decided to up and move to Ireland, although I would expect after a while I would become a Guinness Brewmaster. How cool would that be? What does it take to earn the title of "Brewmaster"? Something for me to look up today.
Speaking of Deportation...... The Detroit Red Wings need to deport Manny Legace after the idiot single-handedly gave Edmonton the series last night. How the #@)$(*#@$@#$ does someone give up 4 goals in the third period? Manny needs to stay away from Detroit for a while otherwise he's likely to be knocked off for being such a shitty goal tender. Edmonton did play well but Detroit played like crap. It'll be interesting to see who comes back next year as Chelios is 44 and Yzerman is 40 with multiple injuries that keep him from being 100%. Legace has head injuries and probably could be diagnosed as legally blind after I watched him last night.
American Idol tonight - I will be able to watch since there are no more rehearsals. And I can vote too! Still think it's ironic that more people vote for AI in 2 hours every week than we have every 4 years for our president of the United States (with polls open all day long). Maybe our voting people should take marketing lessons from Fox???? or not. I respect the position of "American Idol" more than the other one. And I'm still somewhat following The Apprentice. With crybaby now gone (and Tarek who I thought might actually win the thing). So not sure what's going to happen but I do like the expressions that Carolyn gives in the board room that basically shows us that she doesn't think anyone is deserving of winning this thing. They need to do some serious work next year to save this show.
And the last thing I forgot about mentioning late last week is the new Nintendo has a new, but weird, name. Wii (pronounced "we"). It's unusual, but instead of calling it Revolution that everyone kind of liked and was getting used to, Nintendo came up with Wii as a way of telling us that we're all kids at heart. Or that no matter how cool it will be, wii can't spell English words correctly. I wonder how long till the Spanish community starts marketing it as "Nintendo's nosotros" since everything else seems to revolve around them this week.
Song of the Day - Um..... In honor of Deportation Day, I'm bringing back a timeless classic. Don't Go Away Mad (Just Go Away). That sums up my feelings pretty well.
Video of the Day - It's coming - and I'm pumped! So Dark The Con Of Man!! I still think everyone should read the book before going to the movie but I know that won't happen. Takes about 2 days to read the book if you have a weekend you're not doing anything.
Webpage of the Day - Girlspeak to English Dictionary. Where has this been my whole life?
Monday, May 01, 2006
Happy May Day
If I remember right, May Day is the day that we used to put things on people's front door, ring the doorbell and then we'd run away. Then we'd hide behind a tree and watch them stamp out the flaming bag of poop with their boot. "He called the sh**, POOP!"
Concerts are over with for a couple of months. There's a summer pops concert that I am going to pass on this year. I will probably still go to hang out with my friends from La Crosse, but I really hated that experience last year of playing in the intense heat/rain/humidity. Real good for a wooden instrument! But the real stuff will start up again in October. And no, I intend on practicing this summer on some excerpts and solo stuff so I don't lose all of my skillz over the next 5 months.
This past weekend went really well in La Crosse. It was one of the more fun concerts I've played in recent history. Our soloist is one of the assistant musical directors of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. We premiered his new Jazz Piano Concerto and then he came out and stole the show with our performance of Rhapsody in Blue. Then a little encore with Troy (and on Saturday night, Rich as well) in a jazz combo which is different from most traditional LSO concerts. A great way to end the season. Too bad Terry who writes our reviews in the La Crosse Tribune, once again wrote a dud of a review for us from Friday Night. I swear that he doesn't even stick around for the full concert. Terry, if you don't enjoy what you're doing - find something new to write about. I'd be more than happy to write a review for you once a month. I don't even need your "auto-write" MS-Word Extension Tool that you seem to use every time. It only insults the musicians and it's starting to insult your readers in the community.
Three links that I found this morning for Hazel, but I thought I'd share with the rest of you. I used to be a big fan of bragging how well I can "multi-task". Then I found the research and did some tests that opened my eyes and showed me how multi-tasking is definitely a myth.
Creating Passionate Users: Your Brain on Multi-tasking
Why More Is Less - CIO Magazine
Leadership Expert Shatters the Myth of Multi-tasking
For those of you that want the highlites - The myth behind multitasking is a perception of how many things we have going on at one time vs how many things are we actually concentrating on? Look how when we are trying to read directions in a car, or read numbers on a house, we instantly turn the radio down to concentrate on the task at hand. The driving the car part of what we're doing is on autopilot - a task done by the lower part of the brain. A task that we focus on is done by the cerebrum part of the brain. The more we do a function, the more it becomes habit or a function done by the brain stem. All of our respiratory functions or autonomic functions are done by the brain stem. When we are driving a car, riding a bike - these are done by a similar part of the brain stem as the autonomic functions that we rarely have to think about.
But back to multi-tasking..... in a similar style, when we have tasks that are "no brainers" such as walking down the hall, or reciting the alphabet - those tasks are done without a conscience thought so we are free to focus on a more difficult task such as balancing our checkbook, solving a quadratic equation, or TALKING ON THE DANG CELL PHONE. The problem becomes in a situation when the background task requires that focus. Such as driving a car and talking on the cell phone. Not a problem till there's an individual in front of you slamming on the breaks. Then your focus is there, not on the phone. My gripe is the delay it takes most of us to change our focus from the phone to the driving the car part is getting worse and worse.
So there's my disprove for multi-tasking. Try it at home by trying to perform two tasks at the same time. Take out a piece of paper and begin writing down every city and state that you have lived in, traveled to, spent a night in a hotel with a stranger in... then as you are writing those down, begin reciting outloud, all of your family members names - including your grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles. Both tasks are relatively easy when done separately. But as you try to do both at the same time, each task begins to suffer and not only does it take longer to do both tasks, but my bet is that the accuracy will also suffer. Hazel wanted a name for the ability to do many things at once... based on the articles above, it's not recommended and the only thing that you do when you try to "multi-task" is rob yourself of time and accuracy overall.
That's all I gots to say about that.
Song of the Day - Sledgehammer was on at the RAC this morning. And while I usually hate Peter Gabriel, I actually always thought the video for the song was funny.
Video of the Day - Late last week I watched Hostel which was directed by Eli Roth and Quentin Tarantino was one of the Executive Producers. It was a gross movie that I didn't really find overly scary. I was more freaked out from watching the Saw movies than I was with this one. There's a 2nd one being filmed I guess and I'm sure I'll be curious to see it. Don't waste your time on this one though. You'll never want to travel to Europe again.
Webpage of the Day - The guy from Friday is almost at 30,000,000 hits now. I'm still thinking some folks set up some automatic scripts to keep reloading the page so he would get more hits. Still pretty funny if you ask me. Today, I give you Reservoir Dogs reinacted in 30 seconds... by Bunnies!!
Concerts are over with for a couple of months. There's a summer pops concert that I am going to pass on this year. I will probably still go to hang out with my friends from La Crosse, but I really hated that experience last year of playing in the intense heat/rain/humidity. Real good for a wooden instrument! But the real stuff will start up again in October. And no, I intend on practicing this summer on some excerpts and solo stuff so I don't lose all of my skillz over the next 5 months.
This past weekend went really well in La Crosse. It was one of the more fun concerts I've played in recent history. Our soloist is one of the assistant musical directors of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. We premiered his new Jazz Piano Concerto and then he came out and stole the show with our performance of Rhapsody in Blue. Then a little encore with Troy (and on Saturday night, Rich as well) in a jazz combo which is different from most traditional LSO concerts. A great way to end the season. Too bad Terry who writes our reviews in the La Crosse Tribune, once again wrote a dud of a review for us from Friday Night. I swear that he doesn't even stick around for the full concert. Terry, if you don't enjoy what you're doing - find something new to write about. I'd be more than happy to write a review for you once a month. I don't even need your "auto-write" MS-Word Extension Tool that you seem to use every time. It only insults the musicians and it's starting to insult your readers in the community.
Three links that I found this morning for Hazel, but I thought I'd share with the rest of you. I used to be a big fan of bragging how well I can "multi-task". Then I found the research and did some tests that opened my eyes and showed me how multi-tasking is definitely a myth.
Creating Passionate Users: Your Brain on Multi-tasking
Why More Is Less - CIO Magazine
Leadership Expert Shatters the Myth of Multi-tasking
For those of you that want the highlites - The myth behind multitasking is a perception of how many things we have going on at one time vs how many things are we actually concentrating on? Look how when we are trying to read directions in a car, or read numbers on a house, we instantly turn the radio down to concentrate on the task at hand. The driving the car part of what we're doing is on autopilot - a task done by the lower part of the brain. A task that we focus on is done by the cerebrum part of the brain. The more we do a function, the more it becomes habit or a function done by the brain stem. All of our respiratory functions or autonomic functions are done by the brain stem. When we are driving a car, riding a bike - these are done by a similar part of the brain stem as the autonomic functions that we rarely have to think about.
But back to multi-tasking..... in a similar style, when we have tasks that are "no brainers" such as walking down the hall, or reciting the alphabet - those tasks are done without a conscience thought so we are free to focus on a more difficult task such as balancing our checkbook, solving a quadratic equation, or TALKING ON THE DANG CELL PHONE. The problem becomes in a situation when the background task requires that focus. Such as driving a car and talking on the cell phone. Not a problem till there's an individual in front of you slamming on the breaks. Then your focus is there, not on the phone. My gripe is the delay it takes most of us to change our focus from the phone to the driving the car part is getting worse and worse.
So there's my disprove for multi-tasking. Try it at home by trying to perform two tasks at the same time. Take out a piece of paper and begin writing down every city and state that you have lived in, traveled to, spent a night in a hotel with a stranger in... then as you are writing those down, begin reciting outloud, all of your family members names - including your grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles. Both tasks are relatively easy when done separately. But as you try to do both at the same time, each task begins to suffer and not only does it take longer to do both tasks, but my bet is that the accuracy will also suffer. Hazel wanted a name for the ability to do many things at once... based on the articles above, it's not recommended and the only thing that you do when you try to "multi-task" is rob yourself of time and accuracy overall.
That's all I gots to say about that.
Song of the Day - Sledgehammer was on at the RAC this morning. And while I usually hate Peter Gabriel, I actually always thought the video for the song was funny.
Video of the Day - Late last week I watched Hostel which was directed by Eli Roth and Quentin Tarantino was one of the Executive Producers. It was a gross movie that I didn't really find overly scary. I was more freaked out from watching the Saw movies than I was with this one. There's a 2nd one being filmed I guess and I'm sure I'll be curious to see it. Don't waste your time on this one though. You'll never want to travel to Europe again.
Webpage of the Day - The guy from Friday is almost at 30,000,000 hits now. I'm still thinking some folks set up some automatic scripts to keep reloading the page so he would get more hits. Still pretty funny if you ask me. Today, I give you Reservoir Dogs reinacted in 30 seconds... by Bunnies!!
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