| ...between the sheets. |
[31 Oct 2005|06:29pm] |
Heather and I had physicals this morning, and found our new doctor. Our insurance plan doesn't require us to choose a primary care physician; we can go to any damn doctor we want in our network. This actually makes it harder to choose one, because unlike with plans that might lock you in to a certain provider, I feel like I need to make a wise choice since I have so many options.
The physical went well; I'm not quite as fit as the president, but my blood pressure is healthy and I don't seem to have any abnormalities.
The doctor did recommend I undergo a sleep study, to investigate some snoring and breathing issues I may want to address. I'm intrigued at the idea of sleeping overnight in a lab, with wires attached to me and cameras monitoring me. - Will they be able to analyze my
somnambulatory killing sprees dream patterns? - Will the bed be as comfortable as our bed at home, or will it be an unforgiving hospital bed, thus tainting their results significantly?
- Will they allow me to hit the snooze bar in the morning? If not, I'll mumble "You're screwing up the experiment" and throw pillows at them.
- From my reading on the web, it appears that most sleep labs require you to shower before you leave. Is there a reason for this? Do they study me in there, too? Why can't I shower at home?
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| Trivia Recap |
[27 Oct 2005|11:47am] |
I haven't posted anything about trivia for a while because our team has been performing poorly for a good string of Wednesday nights. I think it's safe to say that the "Olsen Twins" dynasty is over, since we haven't won in many weeks. However, last night, we broke our slump. In an impressive showing, Dean, Mike, and I pulled off the first place finish with probably the smallest team we've ever had.
Highlights
- Angelina Jolie is the daughter of which famous actor? Yes, a gimmee, and this was a social.
- Which U.S. president has made the most Supreme Court appointments? Probably my favorite question of the night, because it made me feel clever
- How many times has World Series extended into November? We came up with the correct answer, and the correct circumstances, but figured we were off by one, and guessed wrong. Second-guessing yourself sucks.
- What year was the Georgia-Florida game last played outside Jacksonville?
- What word corresponds to each of the following ingredients when you order Waffle House hashbrowns?
- Tomatoes
- Onions
- Chili
- Mushrooms
- Name the father, mother, and two children on The Addams Family
We had a strong first round, but we weren't the only ones. We were tied for first with four other teams. We correctly determined that Cleveland moved to Baltimore and became the Ravens in 1996 and managed to stay within a few points of the lead.
Kelly, the Trivia Guy, was out for the duration and had to send a replacement to run the game (though Kelly still wrote the questions, as evidenced by the Waffle House question based on a suggestion by our team).
Going into the final question, we were three points behind first place. The question: "What year were Ethel and Julius Rosenberg executed?" The answer to this one was truly pulled from the depths of my memory, and I think we were the only team to get it correct, giving us the win!
All in all, I'm proud of our showing, especially with so few of us on the team, and perhaps (just perhaps), we are poised for another winning streak.
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| Copeland's Cheesecake Bistro, Atlantic Station - (404) 815-8800 |
[25 Oct 2005|04:26pm] |
You can see from the title that this is just an informational post.
I often expect all the information I could possibly need will be indexed by Google, or exist somewhere on the web. That's not always the way it happens.
Case in point: I was trying to make a reservation for us to eat with the in-laws tonight at the new Copeland's Cheesecake Bistro in Atlantic Station, but the coupon I got last week during the grand opening doesn't have a phone number for the restraurant. Quick Google (Web/Local) search -- no number. Went to the woefully stagnant atlanticstation.com's listing for the restaurant -- no number there either.
I eventually had to look up the number of the investment group that built this restaurant, and call and ask their receptionist for the number. My scavenger hunt paid off.
Why, you ask, am I even writing about this? Hopefully this post will get indexed in Google soon so that others don't have to perform the same laborious investigation.
The number for Copeland's Cheesecake Bistro in Atlantic Station is (404) 815-8800.
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[24 Oct 2005|10:28am] |
Uh, good luck, Mom, Dad, and Stephen...
I just talked to my Mom and things were "blowing around the house". I don't really know what that means. The phone connection kept dying, too, but they still had power. I figure that they weathered last year's storms pretty well, so they'll probably be fine today.
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| Lost |
[21 Oct 2005|05:04pm] |
 I started Season One of Lost last night. Having abandoned Survivor this season, and being desperate for something widescreen to enjoy on the tv, I acquired the whole season and am prepared to hunker down and watch it all pretty quickly, so that we can start watching Season 2 in HD.
I watched the first two hours, which is technically just the 2-hour pilot, though each part has a separate episode number and credits. I know I'm technically the last person on earth to get into this show, but it definitely seems very well done so far. Good characters, loads of mystery and suspense, great-looking special effects and even some enigmatic symbolism really work together to draw you in.
When we watched the first 3 seasons of 24 on DVD, it took us about a month, which is an insane pace for 72 episodes of anything, even something that moves as quickly as that show did. I don't know if I'll be able to go as fast with Lost, especially with college football and November sweeps coming up, but I'm definitely interested in getting through it quickly enough to enjoy the current season ASAP.
I'd ask all kinds of questions about polar bears and transceivers and Korean subtitles, but I guess I'll figure those things out soon enough.
Added note: The TV show recaps at Television Without Pity are hilarious.
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| Fee-based firefighters |
[17 Oct 2005|04:07pm] |
Carl Berg failed to pay a $25 annual fee for rural fire protection and, as a result, firefighters let his house burn to the ground last month near International Falls, Minn.
Along with his daughter and a grandson, Berg escaped the fire, grabbing two rifles and a camcorder as he went.
"I lost everything [else]," he said. "Stand and watch it burn was all I could do. ... They should have put the thing out, but they didn't."
Fee not paid; firefighters let home burn
My first instinct is that $25 a year for rural fire protection is a pretty sweet deal, especially since the article itself notes that their initial efforts alone cost the department over $1,000.
This reminds me a bit of an earlier discussion in which I participated regarding the power company and their inability to legally cut nonpayers off during particularly cold weather. I tried to make my point there, and the same issues of ownership should apply to this decision. If you don't pay for fire protection (or homeowner's insurance, or car insurance, or for a motorcycle helmet), you don't get the concomitant protection. That said, such protection should only be mandatory if there's any danger of the fire spreading to the property of others. It's not unreasonable to ask people to minimize obvious risks that their property may present to the property of others.
And I ask again-- who looks at a $25 bill for a year of fire protection and says "Hmm, should I pay this or not?" Seems like a no-brainer to me. And I bet it seems like a no-brainer now to Mr. Berg, the owner of the incinerated mobile home.
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| Big Weekend with Family and Friends |
[13 Oct 2005|04:20pm] |
Saturday
We had a good group of people over to watch the UGA/Tenn. game, and we all know how that went. The new TV was in full effect, and everyone had a good time. It was definitely an experiment in cramming people into a small space, and we've quickly learned that our little condo was not designed for entertaining groups of people. Still, we managed to gather around the big screen and enjoy the thrilling contest.
We bought chicken for everyone from Roasters, and it was fantastic. I recommend their "Instant Party" for a quick and easy way to entertain a group of people. (If those people like buffalo wings, chicken fingers, and spicy spinach dip!)
After several rounds of beer and margaritas, and a sweet victory over the Vols, we walked over to IKEA across the street. The place was packed as usual, and it seems like we've (thankfully) gotten over our urge to spend hundreds of dollars every time we visit.
Sunday
Some of Heather's family came over for lunch. We made tacos. Surprisingly, the simple meal was a hit. I think slicing fresh tomatoes and onions goes a long way toward making a simple meal seem more... thought out. I mean, all we really did was buy a few pounds of beef and some sour cream. Come to think of it, how, then, did we spend $100+ at Kroger?
Of course, I had to come in to the office both Saturday and Sunday for a big deadline Monday morning. This also forced me to miss kickball for the second time on Sunday evening. I'm glad to finally be working a less hectic schedule this week. Those 50-60 hour weeks take a toll on your system.
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| Military Recruiter Gets It |
[12 Oct 2005|04:42pm] |
I'm probably overreacting, but I was encouraged, if only briefly, by a quote I read in a Washington Post article this afternoon. The article, The Army's Musical Pitch: Download, Join Up is a simple, brief piece about a promotion the National Guard is doing-- agree to be contacted by a recruiter, and you'll get 3 free iTunes Music Store downloads.
It's an inconsequential program, and I could care less about the promotion itself, but check out what the recruiter said: (emphasis mine)In contrast, ads for the Guard's iTunes promotion are less expensive and have run on hundreds of Web sites frequented by young people. (Music.com, Billboard.com and the Web site for Fry's Electronics are examples.) Each download costs the government between 90 cents and a dollar, Jones said. That's much cheaper than more traditional giveaways of hats and T-shirts, which can cost $3 per item plus delivery charges.
"My responsibility is to get the best bang for the buck out of what we are entrusted with," Jones said. What an important distinction...
How rare it is to see an official in any public agency stand up and recognize the nature of "their" money. We, the people, entrust an agent of force with the ability to sieze some of our cash, with the expectation that they will uphold their concomitant responsibility to use our collective earnings wisely.
It makes me think of the congressmen who approved $500k to paint a jet to look like a salmon, a $50 million indoor rainforest in Iowa, a $200 million bridge to nowhere, and other excessive, worthless projects. I'd like them to get on TV, announce what they're spending our money on, and with a straight face, look right into the camera and say "This project is in keeping with my duty to responsibly spend your money, which you have entrusted to us, the congress."
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| Monopoly. |
[10 Oct 2005|08:44am] |
So, driving to work this morning, I heard a commercial for the Georgia Lottery's latest game, and the announcer said "There's no other game in Georgia like it!"
Really? There's no other game like it? That's shocking, considering the state government has a total monopoly on those games. So they created a type of game that is illegal for anyone else to offer, and then advertise that there's "no other game like it"? Amazing!
It doesn't even seem like there's any debate over whether this is a proper function of government. Maybe there's a section of the U.S. constitution that I missed, a part that says "And the States Shall Create a Game whereby Citizens can Pick their Favourite Numbers, but Make such games Illegal otherwise; These States Shall offer Worse Odds than any other Game, and Shall be Exempt from Fair Advertising Laws and Thus can Lie about where the Money Goes."
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| Victory is sweet. |
[09 Oct 2005|04:07pm] |
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Every Georgia victory is a moment of triumph, and yesterday's thrashing of the Volunteers was particularly sweet.
Besides remaining undefeated, positioning ourselves well for an SEC run, and shaming 100,000 country folk on their turf for the third time in a row, I also get to enjoy the fruits of a wager I made (along with some other UGA fans) over at Rusty's blog.
Which is now sporting the Red and Black. For 6 weeks. NICE.
Kudos to Rusty for being a man of his word and going through with it.
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[30 Sep 2005|10:31am] |
- Evolution
Some Christians apparently see The March of the Penguins as good scientific support for Intelligent Design.
Because obviously, the most contrived, mythical, unscientific explanation for something must be the correct one."To think that natural selection or even the penguins themselves could come up with the idea to migrate miles and miles multiple times each year without their partner or their offspring is a bit insulting to my intellect. How great is our God!" Ignoring the ripped-straight-from-The-Onion flavor of that last interjection, pretending that natural selection is an entity that can "come up" with things sounds like a third grade science paper at best. It's like saying "To think that gravity or even a rock could come up with the idea to fall to earth at a rate of 9.8m/s² is insulting to my intellect. Praise Jesus!"
Oh, and I loved this bit earlier in the article:Due to harsh conditions, most of the young chicks do not survive. Hmm, yeah, I guess only the 'fittest' survive. I think I've heard of that before.
So... Baby birds freezing to death in hellish antartic conditions over and over throughout the seasons is something you consider well-designed? And you wrote a press release to trumpet the fact that this icy death props up your pseudoscience so well? Now you're insulting my intelligence.
- Abstinence:
Hey, kids, you should try abstinence! In fact, let's spend a billion dollars on teaching abstinence. Oh, we already did? "There’s a group of people who are using abstinence as a vehicle, pretending to be concerned about public health," says Bearman. "But it’s really a vehicle to advance a program, a cultural program that doesn’t help public health." This is a very good point. It's similar to using Leviticus 18:22 to push an anti-gay agenda. None of the crusaders --who use this verse to condemn homosexuals-- care the least bit about the other prohibitions in this chapter, which is rife with restrictions on all kinds of behavior. That same set of laws prohibits eating birds of prey, eating shellfish, cross breeding livestock, picking up sticks on a Saturday, planting a mixture of seeds in a field, and wearing clothing that is a blend of two textiles, but imagine that-- nobody protests these activities whatsoever. Could it be that they are using the bible verse as a cover to try to restrict activities that might make them uncomfortable, conveniently choosing one restriction from the bible among literally hundreds that they ignore?
Of course, it gets better. Later in the story, the good minister promoting these programs has the balls to throw his own daughter under the bus with this one:"A kid’s part of your program, and he comes to you and says, 'You know, I’m going to have sex. I’ve reached a point and I’m going to do this. Should I use a condom?' What do you say?" asks Bradley.
"My own daughter, my 16-year-old daughter, tells me she’s going to be sexually active. I would not tell her to use a condom," says Pattyn. "I don't think it'll protect her. It won’t protect her heart. It won’t protect her emotional life. And it’s not going to protect her. I don’t want her to get out there and think that she’s going to be protected using a condom."
But wouldn't his daughter be more protected with a condom than without? "Not long term," says Pattyn. Wow. CBS didn't even bring up his daughter, but this minister wants you to know that he's so committed to keeping kids ignorant about sex that he'd tell his own daughter, even if she's going to have sex, not to use a condom. He's an awesome dad, isn't he? Combine that with the other statistics* on abstinence-only education that you can find in the article and I think he's a good candidate for father of the year.
[*Summary: Kids who try abstinence are A) one-third less likely to use condoms, B) more likely to try anal or oral sex, C) much less likely to get tested for STDs, and D) 88 percent likely to have sex before marriage anyway.]
- Eminent Domain
I really can't think of anything sadder than a private Catholic high school being allowed to annex a perfectly good bar through eminent domain. In Tan's situation, Cotter said he would argue that the need for St. Peter's Preparatory School to complete its athletic field outweighs the current use of the building as a tavern. And I think the need for me to have a ranch in Montana outweighs the current use of the land as Ted Turner's playground. Damn, if only I were more politically connected, I could just steal whatever I wanted from its rightful owner!
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| Final Livejournal Post |
[19 Sep 2005|10:39am] |
This will be my final post made directly to my Livejournal.
I have transitioned all of my Public LJ entries and comments to my new blog at http://blog.garrettvonk.com. Come on over and visit! It's a work in progress; I'm not done with the style or the links yet. Livejournal is great, but I already pay for hosting and a domain name, and Wordpress is free and more flexible than LJ. If you link to me in blogrolls and such, please change the link to http://blog.garrettvonk.com
For those of you keeping track, this is the second migration of my blog. I moved from Easyjournal to Livejournal about 3.5 years ago.
LJ Friends:
Just keep ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) gvonk on your friends list. Wordpress has a plugin that will continue to sync my posts here with the blog. I'm going to disable comments in the LJ completely, however, and each entry will have a link to the post on my Wordpress blog, where you can then comment as usual. This will probably mean the end of any Friends Only posts I've made, but I don't think I made very many in the first place. I assume Livejournal will let me keep posting even after my paid subscription lapses next week. I forget what free users get since I've never been one.
RSS Subscribers:
My feed URL is now: http://blog.garrettvonk.com/?feed=rss2
Easy Bloglines Button:
Please update your subscription.
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| UGA football |
[18 Sep 2005|02:58pm] |
Heather and I went to see UGA vs Louisiana-Monroe yesterday in Athens. It was fantastic to be back on campus, amidst the fun of the game day atmosphere.
We bought our tickets online on GeorgiaDogs.com last week when a few became available. This was somewhat of a mistake. We were seated in the 600 section, the huge addition that was completed in 2003 (login).
 The Teeming Masses
The experience was exactly how I remembered it... Sitting around in the sun drinking beer out of a can, people dropping food on the ground and just laughing and eating it.... The long trek to the stadium and the absolute herds of people trying to get in the gates.
There were some Christian protesters out on Sanford Drive trying to get me to put down the Miller Lite and pick up a bible.
The game was a great rout, as expected, and today my legs are a little sore from all the walking, standing, etc.
[Flickr Photoset]
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[18 Sep 2005|02:08pm] |
Last Sunday was our first kickball match. Our team, with the totally awesome name of Los Kickball Fantasticos, got off to a promising start, holding a seasoned team to only 2 points. Unfortunately, in our rookie outing we only managed to score 1 point, so we lost 2-1.
Highlights:
- The opposing team was composed of many players who'd played on the championship team last year, which was a little intimidating for our first match.
- We got off to a lead in the second inning, scoring a run that would remain unanswered until the fourth inning.
- One of the team members on the opposing team had had quite too much to drink, and after being tagged out by the kickball (thrown by our pitcher) halfway to first, continued toward the base and went into a full slide on his face, bloodying himself up and causing riotous laughter across the field.
Our next game is tonight, and we're better prepared this time, with Hoover planning to grill out before the game and my fridge actually stocked with beer, rather than being empty like last week. (Blue laws suck.)
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| Katrina and Kelo |
[12 Sep 2005|11:44am] |
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I wonder if any of the governments in New Orleans will take it upon themselves to sieze the flooded homes, since the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Kelo v. New London gives them every legal justification to do so. They could bulldoze everyone's homes and sell them to condo developers! Thanks, Supreme Court!
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| Random Helicopter at IKEA |
[09 Sep 2005|10:03am] |
It's a good thing I'm not too paranoid. On our way back from the Weezer/Foo Fighters show last night, as we were about to turn into our parking lot, Mike spotted a black helicopter landing in the IKEA parking lot. I pulled around to see it, and we saw someone in uniform get out. This is only a matter of yards from our window. I still have no idea what it was doing there, but it took off a minute or two later. Maybe I'm just always being chased by black helicopters and I don't know it.
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| Gas Gouging |
[02 Sep 2005|10:07am] |
With some retailers advertising gasoline prices as high as $6 per gallon, Gov. Sonny Perdue signed an executive order authorizing state sanctions against gas stations that gouge consumers.
"I do not believe there is an energy emergency in this state but we will not tolerate our citizens perceiving the fact there is by exorbitant price-gouging prices," he said.
Perdue's order allows the Gov.'s Office of Consumer Affairs to seek civil sanctions against retailers who can't justify their prices based on the price they paid at the terminal for the product, adjusted for their normal markup.
I can see it now... Retailer! Justify your price immediately! The State only allows a certain amount of markup! Have you no concern for your Motherland?
I mean, honestly, anyone who pays six bucks a gallon when the average price in Atlanta is still about three bucks deserves to be ripped off.
I paid $3.159 for Premium (it was all they had) yesterday, officially the most I've ever spent on gas. That price stands in stark contrast to the lowest I've ever paid, 69 cents a gallon in 1998. The $3.15 gas was only found after driving to three other stations, all of them like this:
Yes, I shot it with my new camera phone.
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| Snorkels |
[19 Aug 2005|09:31am] |
This is one of my favorite photos from our honeymoon. We were on the back of a boat off the coast of Ocho Rios, Jamaica, getting ready to jump into the warm water and snorkel. I was pretty surprised that the company that ran the little day cruise was handing out unlimited beer and rum punch, and then giving tourists a mask and snorkel and letting us jump off the boat in a heavily-trafficked, 20 foot deep channel. Maybe they have good insurance.
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| Flickr Goodness |
[19 Aug 2005|09:16am] |
Well, a month or two after moving my photos over from Fotki to Flickr, I've finally finished giving identifying tags to each and every photo.
People take different approaches to their tags, but mine was to generally identify a) who was in the photo, b) where the photo was taken and c) what is going on. I am excited that the EXIF standard (for digital cameras to encode information in the photo file the moment the picture is taken) has the option to store coordinates from a GPS-enabled device. It'd be a moment of technological beauty if you could see thumbnails of the photos you've taken superimposed over a massive Google Map, located exactly on the map where they were taken. Actually, with the Flickr API and Google Maps API being open to the public, this is something that's actually possible now.
OK, it's been done. Amazing. Guess I should have Googled it before I started.
At this time, I have 20 photosets, and over 2100 photos, with subjects ranging from our wedding to Oktoberfest to our cat, Rosie.
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