Happy Halloween ... from all of us

more animals

But seriously ... vote.

This is the first post I've tagged with "politics". Is "politics" correct? I could use "vote", "voting", "election", "president", or the name of some other office, but I'm going with "politics". Because there just aren't going to be many more posts on voting, elections, or government offices, but "politics" encompasses the whole thing. And I might possibly want to talk about an elected official or a political issue again in the future, possibly before another election takes place.

I'm using "obama", though, because I already created an "obama" tag a few weeks ago. And tags don't like to sit around unused. Plus, I want to get as many "obamas" into my blog as possible, to influence search engine results. Senator Barack Obama.

Hey you, velociraptor! Uh ... you're pretty safe, actually.

35%

Thoughts on web video

Last night I Tweeted that I don't like video on the web. To my Twitter friends I was able to elaborate a bit, giving some examples of what I mean, but my Facebook friends (who receive some of my Tweets but not all) were left wondering why shortly afterward I posted a link to a live streaming video of puppies. Since I don't like video, I mean.

For me the web is, first and foremost, a bucket of information. When I have friends over and we can't remember who the guy was in that movie, or what that eggplant recipe was, I open up my laptop (which is undoubtedly on the coffee table, eagerly awaiting this scenario) and look it up. I get almost all my news online, from The Chicago Tribune to CNN to The Street for financial news. As I mentioned before, I get a lot of my recipes online, from whatever site Google returns when I enter "zucchini tomato onion breadcrumbs" (without quotes).

And when I find the recipe, movie trivia, or news story, I expect to be able to scan the page and get the information I'm looking for within a few seconds. This is where my "I don't like video on the web" whine comes in. I don't want to be linked to a clip of the local newscast's coverage of a story, and sit and watch it for three minutes. If I wanted video news, I'd watch news on TV. And recipes? I've hardly felt as stupefied as the time I linked to what sounded like a cool recipe, only to find that I had to watch a several-minute video of the guy show me how to make the dish in order to get the recipe. Anyone with an ounce of web savvy should know that, for the love of the internets, they should at least have a list of ingredients and a paragraph of directions, you know, like a normal recipe, underneath the video. Video should be added for embellishment only. If I want to see the chef demonstrate his folding technique, or if I really feel the need to see that fire on the South Side, then I can press play.

If you want to show me a video, also give me the information in copy. The only news videos that pass my muster are the kind that also have the story in print underneath. Same with recipes. Same with any "informational" video. I'm probably not going to sit and watch you tell me about your event; you need to write out the important information along with the video. Preferably in a bulleted list.

We're all still learning, I understand. I am as well. The web is still young, and constantly evolving. But I don't think our attention spans are getting any longer. I may be wrong.

Now, here are some videos that I like having on the web. They do not in any way fall under the "information" category; they are only for fun. That's the one of the only categories of video that belongs on the internet: entertainment.

Favorite music videos from the 80s:


When people do cool things with scenes from my favorite movies:


Live streams of puppies sleeping and feeding (I just found this last night and don't know when it's on the air):


Barbaro winning the 132nd Kentucky Derby:


Ninja Cat:


And, "The Website is Down," one of the only reasons to EVER spend 10 minutes watching a video on the web, except in the case of missed TV episodes or presidential debates, and admittedly it's not for everyone, but it's for more people than you think, once you get into it:


So, that's it. Those are my thoughts on appropriate video usage on the web. And trust me, I'm right about this.

Happy birthday, dad

I hope you don't feel any older today than you did yesterday.

Someday I hope to learn whether that's someone's skirt, or a tablecloth, at the right of the frame.

Where my attention span has gone

I have many interests. I'd really like to know something about everything. If you want to know the truth, I'd really like to know everything about everything. I don't aspire to be a Jen-of-all-trades here, no: I want to master them all.

This is why I have shelves and boxes of books on subjects ranging from Buddhism to politics to astronomy, why I have fiction books of all genres (except chick lit, something I'd be happy to never see again in any form), and why I haven't yet gotten around to selling most of a friend's books since she gave them to me to list for sale on half.com. I want to read them first, you see. Topping my list of my friend's books-to-read is Mao's Way because, well, I really don't know shit about Mao and I surely should. Especially considering all I've read about Tibet and the life of the Dalai Lama; I know my learning is very lopsided and I feel quite remiss.

So, why haven't I read Mao's Way yet? It's been in a box for about four years. I'll get to it next, I always say. And then I go and read Jon Stewart's America. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I have the best of intentions, but my attention span works against me. Here's what happened this morning: from a Google Reader feed I opened up four links:

18 Means for Living Below Your Means
How the U.S.A. Elects its President
25 Great Websites from which to Draw Inspiration
Most Popular Items on 6 Internet Sites

Which one did I go to first? The one with the drunk kitten faceplant at the top, of course. It wasn't even very good.

Next, the other one that features a list of a bunch of pretty pictures. But I haven't linked through to any of the sites yet.

I'll end up closing the one about the President since I really do pretty much understand it anyway. And I'll scan the one about living below your means, in the end determining that I already know all that stuff.

I want to master everything, I said? Eh, I guess not really. When I'm not actually working on anything important, my attention span has gone to the LOLcats and I'm basically OK with that.

But I guess if it were easy to master everything, everyone would be doing it.

Nostalgia, thoughts on

A few months ago, if you'll recall, Facebook got weird. My friends list on Facebook was expanding from a list of current work- and real-life-friends to friends from school that I hadn't seen in 10-20 years, some who I wasn't friends with back then and probably won't become friends with today, and finally, to old boyfriends, and I hadn't yet adjusted to all of that.

Now, it's becoming more usual for an old high school friend to pop up on Facebook and become a friendly addition. And more interesting, more usual for me to actually communicate with them for more than a single "Hey-haven't-seen-you-in-forever-hope-you're-doing-great" message — or not at all — and instead, actually start (re)developing real-life friendships with them.

This has caused me to start feeling a little nostalgic, so I went through some boxes of old photos the other day. My living room floor is now strewn with albums, binders and boxes, and some of it has crept all the way upstairs into my office. What I've found is that I've kept surprisingly few prints from high school. (I never throw out a negative, but the prints seem to be long gone.)

So tonight while I was sitting down with dinner, on a whim I got out my old high school yearbooks and flipped through a couple of them, just to see what I'd find. I thought I knew those books pretty well, but there is a lot I had forgotten. Like names, organizations, friends and some old enemies, which brought back some of the bitterness that is usually connected to nostalgia for me. But here are the thoughts that stood out the most:

Some of the kids in those photos, if I saw them on the street today, I'd estimate to be eight years old. I am not kidding.

Beauty and popularity are contextual. Some of those girls and boys who were considered dweeby or gross in high school were nothing of the sort; it was a carryover reputation from much earlier years. (I include myself in this observation.) I found myself thinking, more than once, "Wow, s/he was getting really cute by this age," about someone I clearly recall not being considered any kind of catch. (I myself only had one or two good-looking years all the way through school; I didn't seem to have blossomed until my late 20s.)

Beauty and popularity are contextual. Some of those girls and boys who were considered hot, "IT", and all that were nothing of the sort; it was a carryover reputation from their friends, parents, and much earlier years. For the first time I could laugh at myself for being so intimidated by some of these people.

Where the hell were the future art directors back in high school? Not on the yearbook staff, I'm afraid. (Oh come on, I know you just weren't mature yet. You were only eight.)

I'm 36 years old, so high school was a half-life ago for me. I've carried a lot of animosity toward that block of time since then (you have to understand, Mean Girls was based on high school life in north suburban Chicago, and I was never near the top of the food chain), but I think I'm finally 100% ready to kick all that to the curb. Though I've actually seen glimpses of that old high school snob attitude from former classmates even in the past year, that's their problem. I have no interest in it being mine anymore.

And so here I am, all right with nostalgia. It had always been laced with a bit of bitterness, but now it's mostly sweet.

2008 Chicago Marathon kudos

Congratulations to the top finishers in the 2008 Bank of America Chicago Marathon:

Men
Evans Cheruiyot (2:06:25)
David Mandago (2:07:37)
Timothy Cherigat (2:11:39)

Women
Lidiya Grigoryeva (2:27:17)
Alevtina Biktimirova (2:29:32)
Kiyoko Shimahara (2:30:19)

A special shout out to Olympic gold medalist Constantina Tomescu-Dita, who finished fourth in 2:30:57, and to my twitterpal JesseJStreet who must have finished sometime in the past half hour. (The web site is too bogged down to even contact, so I can't verify!)

Well done!

These are the important issues, folks

Best Friends Animal Society recently announced that Presidential hopeful Barack Obama and his wife Michelle have decided to adopt a dog, rather than buy one, after the election.

This decision may have been made based in part upon the influence of Best Friends and their petition, which has lived at the Obama Family Dog website since July 2008, when the Obamas annouced their interest in having a dog. Best Friends also reported at the time that breeders were pushing for the Obamas to buy a purebred animal.

Now Best Friends has offered to help the Obamas find the right dog.

"Whether it’s a mutt or a special breed on their list, we can tap our vast network of shelters and rescuers around the country to help match the Obamas with just the right dog," said Julie Castle, director of community programs for Best Friends, a place where approximately 600 dogs (and 1,400 other animals) call home. "Mixed breeds, purebreds, young, old, big, small, long-hair, short-hair, black, brown, white or any color in between—we can help the Obamas locate the perfect dog for their home."

Also, don't miss Dogtown on the National Geographic Channel. The weekly show will give you a glimpse of the great facilities at Best Friends for homeless dogs, including most of the Michael Vick dogs.

I am not a financial expert, but...

I believe that an economic downturn is the time to put money away, not take it out. And I invested some today. Not a lot, mind you, but some.

Unless you need the cash soon, this is definitely the time to be maximizing your 401(k) or IRA contribution, especially if your employer matches. I can't believe how many people don't even know if their employers match their retirement savings contributions. This is FREE MONEY, people, and I mean that LITERALLY. Even if your employer matches only 3% or 5%, that's an additional 3-5% of your salary, straight to your retirement savings, for FREE! And right now, while prices are low, is the time to be buying. (Even if the money you save somehow earns nothing by the time you retire, you really must take advantage of the FREE contributions by your employer, if you're lucky enough to have that.)

Buy low, sell high, remember? That doesn't just apply to individual stocks. The only trick right now is putting your money somewhere that your investment won't go to zero. If nothing else, your mattress is not the place to keep your dough. You can open a savings account online and earn at least 3% (my HSBC online account yields 3.25%), and that money is insured up to $250,000. That's just easy.

Watching news of "the crisis" on television is a bit scary, and it strikes me as "real" enough that sometimes I get a little choked up thinking about, bear with me, hard-working Americans and how they strive to earn and save money for themselves and their families. People are worried and they feel that they completely lack control.

But the stock market is just an indicator of confidence. Stock prices don't move on their own. Stock prices move up when people buy, and down when people sell. I'm doing my part to help this indicator of confidence by not selling. Unfortunately, my meager investments are not enough to move markets, but at least I'm keeping my chin up, and am encouraging others to do the same.

I watch CNBC while I work out, and was just treated to 45 minutes of "CASCADING CRASH" commentary while I was on the stairmaster. I just had to say something about it.

Dead bicyclists aren't much fun

I haven't blogged in a while. It's not that I don't have things to say, it's just that everything I get riled up enough to post about is along the lines of how I can't wait for USA to stop promoting "The Starter Wife" so heavily because to me it looks like the most uninteresting show imaginable and I just want the season to start, already, because not a single clip they've shown in an ad has been the least bit funny, intriguing, or engaging, and if they can't do better than that in the ads, the show is going to tank fast, and then I won't have to hear about it ever again. Because the entire premise — a woman living in la-la land who has no idea that her marriage sucks gets knocked on her ass by divorce and suddenly O NOES WHO AM I AND WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH MY LIFE — is an affront to me. OK? People, get a grip on yourselves. Your life has value. You don't need another person, especially a jerkface who divorces you, to live a full life. And you don't need to listen to your jerkface friends like Judy Davis when they tell you crap about having "no prospects" (which seems to be the only scene they want to show in the ads that involves more than one line of dialogue, and that doesn't just show Debra Messing contorting her face in some really unattractive way), either.

And who wants to read my rant about that?

But then I go and visit No Impact Man this morning, a blog I visit often, and the title of today's blog post alone makes me go, "Whoa. Now that's interesting."

And a little shocking. The post is called Sad pictures of dead bicyclists that I plan to show the Senator. The author, Colin, you see, was nearly hit by the car of Senator Jeff Klein (Dem, NY) when he was riding his bike a while back. So Colin hopes to draw attention to the problem of bikes and cars and how they might learn to live together better. (Because at least bicyclists and drivers know there's a problem. No la-la land on the streets of NYC.)

And Colin has stated all the reasons why bicycling is so good for humanity, and has prepared this shocking statement, and he's right about all of it. It would really help if traffic policy allowed us all to get along.

My only question is: how? Where are the ideas? Are they being saved for a blog entry for another day? Because I've experienced the problems, too. The last time I rode my bike home from downtown Chicago (a 27-mile journey) I had to swerve up onto a sidewalk, on the opposite side of the street, and ended up traveling the opposite direction, if you can imagine it, to avoid being hit by a car. The driver wasn't even particularly at fault. He was just doing what he was doing (which was, apparently, making an alley-assisted 3-point turn) and wasn't looking for me, and I didn't understand what he was doing, so I hastily decided to just bike around him, but little did either of us know, we were both about to go the same way. And I'm not really sure what we can do about that.

And I'm not really sure that adding more bike lanes, or adding bicycle-only streets will help. Because have you ever been stopped at a light with 20 other bicyclists, preparing to cross North Broadway? It's a pain in the ass. And the idea that bicyclists should be stopping at every stop sign in the city? We would never get where we were going, and we'd badly inhibit motorists, too. Can you imagine all these cyclists slowing to a stop at the end of every block, and then starting up again? It takes for-frigging-ever. I do not want more bicyclists taking the route I take to work. There, I said it. It's selfish, but true. Bicycle congestion is a worse problem than automobile congestion ... it's just that bicycle congestion rarely exists, so we're mostly unaware of it.

I can't imagine how the Chinese do it. Of course, they have lots of problems, but mostly when automobiles are involved. From Overview of Bicycle Transportation in China:

Bicycling is the transportation mode of choice for up to 70% of the urban passenger trips in China. However, because of its slowness, serious traffic problems occur when bicycle traffic mixes with motorized vehicle traffic. The mixing of faster and slower traffic modes causes a lower capacity and results in higher accident rates. In the average Chinese city, about 30% of the traffic fatalities are bicyclists. Traffic separation, better intersection control, and improved bicycle management are recommended to improve bicycle transportation in China.

That was written in 1993. I have no idea if it's improved since then, but I hope so. And I'd like to see some video of both bicycle and bicycle/automobile traffic in Chinese cities, just to see how it works. Because I don't have any ideas, either, and I hope Colin and Senator Klein can come up with something together.

I have cyclist readers. What are your ideas?

October Desktop Wallpaper Calendar from SmashingMagazine.com!

Yeah, so it's the first day of October, see, and on the first day of the month I always take a trip to Smashing Magazine to choose a new desktop wallpaper calendar for my PC.

I don't know if the wallpaper pool is better than usual, if October brings out some creativity, or if it's just me, but I'm digging a bunch of them this month. Of course, there are the autumn, harvest-y types:


Nicely done, but a little too "schoolteacher" for me.

Then you have what I can only assume are your "Things that you'll find yourself eating in October because your vegetable garden has gone to hell" wallpapers:


I really like the whole grilled cheese and soup thing, but am afraid that the acorns would just make me hungry.

And the expected Halloween-themed spreads:


Black iron fences always remind me of John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness, even if there isn't an abandoned church full of green liquid behind it. The recurring dream sequence in that movie scared the crap out of me. Anyway, I decided that these two were too obviously Halloween-y.

I can't not like the October Monsters twins:


But they look like they should be ads for AMC's Fearfest or something. And we know how I feel about advertising.

And so it was, and so it had to be, and so it is, Mister Crane:


Decidedly spooky, definitely Halloween-y, but what it comes down to is this: I can't resist a doe-eyed horse. So that's my October winner.

An honorable mention, and close second, goes to:


Because, how could it not?