Sorry to pollute your feeds, folks - just need to see if I found the problem or not.

Gary LaPointe usefully pointed out that a mess o' spam links popped up in my last post. It was the weirdest thing - only appeared in Google Reader, and I couldn't see them in source anywhere, although he could. Anyway, a little searching turned up some help in the WordPress forums, so hopefully this is all fixed up now.

I've been a member of the Ann Arbor Ad Club for several years now. This year will be my last. When I started, the annual membership covered 6-7 presentations at which dinner was served. In the first season, they were at Mediterrano, and they were wonderful. The speakers were good, the food was fantastic and there was a cash bar. Then they moved the meetings to what's now the basement at SPARK. It wasn't as nice, but they had good catering and offered free wine and beer. And then they moved to Conor O'Neill's, which was better, but then they went out to a hotel at the mall, which was abysmal. Now they're back to the hideous SPARK basement. And as ...

One of the games I like to play on the Xbox 360 is Viva Pinata. It's a gentle game, kind of silly but still fun. The gist of it is that you have a garden and you can grow various plants to attract different kinds of pinatas. The fun lies in getting a new special species of pinata and/or in decorating your garden with outlandish stuff. It's a good game. So we picked up Viva Pinata 2: Trouble in Paradise when it came out, and I was kind of excited to see what they had added. Unfortunately, I think they've broken it. It's not fun anymore. You see, in the first game, there were bad guys who would come in and break ...

Sometime yesterday afternoon, something went wrong with the video driver or monitor on my PC laptop. It just beeps at me when I turn it on. Beeeeeep Beep Beep -> black screen. Now, I have been itching to get a MacBook now that my main machine is a Mac, but I don't want to right this second. Rumor has it that the line is due for an update before the holidays, so it just doesn't seem wise to buy one right now. The two main uses of the PC laptop were Microsoft Money, where we keep all our accounting data, and the boys use it to look up walk-throughs for the console games they play while sitting in front of the tv. ...

Team FJM (Special Ops) needs 11 electrical outlets to maintain full-powered functionality. (4 phones, 2 PSPs, 2 Nintendo DSs, 2 cameras, 1 computer) Our current bivouac only has 10 available. Adverse conditions today dictate covert operations. We will be infiltrating several buildings, including one designed personally by the chief architect of the enemy forces, Gehry. His monstrous eyesores have struck fear and loathing into the hearts of thousands, and for an unlucky few, even caused blindness with their egregious ugliness. Pray that we return safely.

I have a theory: a few decades ago, if the scientists who noticed that the planet was getting warmer chose a different phrase than 'global warming' to rally public support for their cause, serious work on the problem would have begun much earlier. The problem with the phrase 'global warming' is that it's a scientist's point of view, not a citizen's point of view. Yes, the planet as a whole may be getting warmer, but most people don't grasp that - they see that they've had a unusually cold winter and laugh at the idea that their world is getting warmer. Why should they believe a scientist who says something they can clearly see is not true? The scientists were ...

Two little stories, make of them what you will: Jack is in seventh grade and is taking the required Health class. It includes the dreaded Subject One Does Not Speak About With One's Mother, but apparently covers other stuff like exercise and nutrition and so forth as well. He was feeling chatty after school yesterday and was telling me that they were covering why people eat the foods they do. For example, your religion may ban certain foods, your culture may have its own foods, certain foods may be convenient, etc. I asked him if they talked about economics - why you might make food choices based on how much some foods cost. Nope. Never mentioned. As I watch the economy imploding ...

Sitting there in the SXSW panel, I don't even remember which one and it hardly matters anyway, I was overcome - and I do mean overcome, with attendant panicky feelings - that I can't stand the web. I mean, I hate the web. No, not the web per se, but websites. If I see one more horizontal navigation bar, I think I'm going to scream. Like, out loud. They all look the same. It's the same damn thing over and over and over again. I am so damn tired of it. But there's a problem with railing against all that sameness. The web needs horizontal navigation bars and/or left/right side navigation. It's necessary for usability. Given the amount of stupidity I ...

The boys have just arrived after spending the weekend at Norm's. They're here all this week - all day, every day - because it's spring break. AAPS didn't used to have this week off, they just did an Easter break, but somewhere along the line, the School Board decided that in a college town where the U has this week off, the schools need to be off, too. I'll note that the U doesn't have a long Easter break, but the AAPS didn't cancel theirs, so that kind of shoots the 'we need to match their schedule' argument, no? So now the kids get two weeks off school, spaced about 3 weeks apart. Can you feel my enthusiasm? Luckily, Keith ...