A: He really doesn't care how people get out of New Orleans.

The Duct Tape Band-Aid

We had fun last night. We went to the Ravinia Festival which is a summer-long series of concerts north of Chicago. They're in a big park in which you can pull in coolers. It's a fairly yuppie event. We had wine and cheese and I even made sushi.

Anyway, they had big screens set up all over the park and showed Wizard of Oz. The cool thing was that they had digitally erased the music from the film and instead, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was there playing the entire soundtrack live, start to finish. It was really neat to hear/see. From what I understand as well, the MGM braintrust discarded the original score after the film was released, so expert composers had to listen to the movie and reconstruct the score from scratch.

All very well done, and the kids loved it!

Didn't get home until after midnight, however, so I'm zonked.

I'm back home from the Packers/Chargers game that I suddenly found myself with a ticket to this (well, yesterday) morning.

It rained the entire game. I'm soaked.

And tired. (Drove home three hours through a thunderstorm. That'll keep you alert at the wheel...)

But happy. The Pack won 10-7. Hopefully we'll never have to depend on the second string defense for anything because they're a bit... porous...

First real game I've seen at Lambeau in ten years though. Even though it was only a preseason game, it was still a blast!

I got over playing Galaxis and Kings of Chaos. Now a "friend" of mine has gotten me playing NeoPets...

If you like playing Flash games, that's the site for you.

Eh... I didn't need to get the ceiling painted, anyway...

If Leonard says it, it must be true! (*.mov file)

The potato is the cucumber's father...

Coldstone Creamery is giving away (PDF file) free slices of ice cream cake from 5-8 PM today for a small donation to the Make-a-Wish foundation.

Mmmmmmmm...

My wife went in for her weekly checkup yesterday, and the doctor didn't like her blood pressure and ordered a stress test. She failed it, and was admitted and induced. (Two weeks before the due date.)

A few hours later, we had ourselves a new baby boy!

That was a bit of a shock, as the doctor gave us a 95% shot that we were having a girl. We didn't tell Thing One, so she didn't get her hopes up for having a sister, then suddenly pull a bait and switch on her and give her a brother instead. Didn't matter. When we told her it was a boy, she burst into tears. She seemed to get over it pretty quickly, though, as she was all smiles when she finally saw him.

Thing Two was interested, but at only three, I'm not sure that it's completely set in yet that that little thing is coming home to live with us. We'll see in a couple days...

Mom and baby are doing fine. The labor was relatively short, and she only had to push a few times.

He was a biggun' as well... 9 lbs. 3 oz, 21". And that's two weeks early. Who knows how much bigger he would have been if he showed up on time...

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Pictures

For the top row, I have {unknown}, Oliver Hardy, Redd Fox, Douglas Adams (Thanks, peacefinder!), Karen Carpenter, John Steinbeck, and Lionel Barrymore
Bottom row: Hoot Gibson, Clara Barton, Gandhi, Harriet Tubman, Grover Cleveland, Rudolph Valentino, and Woodrow Wilson.

Anybody have any idea who #1 in the top row is?

The fun part is, once I figure out who all the people are, I somehow have to figure out a GPS coordinate out of them which will land somewhere in (probably) Racine County, Wisconsin...

Sweet Jesus, I've got 72 free songs from the Pepsi contest, thanks to some friends sending me all their codes. What to buy... What to buy...

Maybe some Rockin' Veggies...

By ROBERT FRIEDMAN
Perspective Editor
The St. Petersburg Times
March 27, 2005

Like many of you, I have been compelled by recent events to prepare a more detailed advance directive dealing with end-of-life issues. Here's what mine says:

* In the event I lapse into a persistent vegetative state, I want medical authorities to resort to extraordinary means to prolong my hellish semi existence. Fifteen years wouldn't be long enough for me.

* I want my wife and my parents to compound their misery by engaging in a bitter and protracted feud that depletes their emotions and their bank accounts.

* I want my wife to ruin the rest of her life by maintaining an interminable vigil at my bedside. I'd be really jealous if she waited less than a decade to start dating again or otherwise rebuilding a semblance of a normal life.

* I want my case to be turned into a circus by losers and crackpots from around the country

* I want those crackpots to spread vicious lies about my wife.

* I want to be placed in a hospice where protesters can gather to bring further grief and disruption to the lives of dozens of dying patients and families whose stories are sadder than my own.

* I want the people who attach themselves to my case because of their deep devotion to the sanctity of life to make death threats against any judges, elected officials or health care professionals who disagree with them.

* I want the medical geniuses and philosopher kings who populate the Florida Legislature to ignore me for more than a decade and then turn my case into a forum for weeks of politically calculated bloviation.

* I want total strangers - oily politicians, maudlin news anchors, ersatz friars and all other hangers-on - to start calling me "Bobby," as if they had known me since childhood.

* I'm not insisting on this as part of my directive, but it would be nice if Congress passed a "Bobby's Law" that applied only to me and ignored the medical needs of tens of millions of other Americans without adequate health coverage.

* Even if the "Bobby's Law" idea doesn't work out, I want Congress who claim to believe in "less government and more freedom" - to trample on the decisions of doctors, judges and other experts who actually know something about my case. And I want members of Congress to launch into an extended debate that gives them another excuse to avoid pesky issues such as national security and the economy.

* I want the state Department of Children and Families to step in at the last moment to take responsibility for my well-being, because nothing bad could ever happen to anyone under DCF's care.

* And because Gov. Jeb Bush is the smartest and most righteous human being on the face of the Earth, I want any and all of the forementioned directives to be disregarded if the governor happens to disagree with them. If he says he knows what's best for me, I won't be in any position to argue.

Nuclear disaster takes down Slashdot.

News at 11.

API - Clearwater, Florida - Lorena Bobbitt's sister Luella was arrested yesterday for an alleged attempt to perform the same act on her husband as her famous sister had done several years ago. Sources reveal the sister was not as accurate as Lorena. She allegedly missed the target and stabbed her husband in the upper thigh causing severe muscle and tendon damage. The husband is reported to be in serious, but stable condition.

Luella has been charged with one count of a misdewiener.

Amaztype.com

You enter a word, then it searches for books at Amazon which contain that word and uses those book covers to create the word in big block letters.

An interesting use of web technology...