I encountered three items of interest to me lately.

1. I read this week that a private rocket crashed in the New Mexico desert.  What I found noteworthy about this is that is was carrying cremated remains among other things.  If you think about this, I think there is a message here.  First off, the person died, then they were cremated, then they crashed, died and burned in a rocket accident.  I'm pretty sure these people were meant to be dead.
2. I also read an article about Beijing's penis emporium.  I understand cultural differences about things we like or dislike eating such as cows, pigs, dogs, or insects.  However, I'm not sure I can make the leap and bring myself to eat somebody's or something's penis.  This is one food group I will be leaving out of my repertoire.
3. My alma mater continues to receive rave reviews.  I received their e-news letter recently but I could not find the original article online so I'm include some of it for bragging purposes!
   
   Cornell has been cited by the New York Times as one of 20 hidden gems in higher education that “stress undergraduate teaching, have established or rising scholarship” and are good alternatives to popular brand-name universities. And former New York Times education reporter Loren Pope, in the third edition of his “Colleges That Change Lives,” again included Cornell among 40 “catalytic” colleges that “outdo the Ivies and research universities in producing performers.”

Cornell is featured in “The Best 361 Colleges” from the Princeton Review, which ranks us for the second consecutive year among the top 15 in three categories – as a college where students are pleased with their financial assistance, where class discussions are encouraged and where professors make themselves accessible.

In its annual ranking of colleges, U.S. News & World Report placed Cornell among the 3rd tier of national liberal arts colleges. With our extended community of alumni and friends, we share the frustration that Cornell is not included among the 1st and 2nd tier institutions – with which we are most closely associated by other college guides. There is no doubt, however, that Cornell’s profile as a national liberal arts college continues to rise.

Posted @ 9/26/2006 05:25:00 PM | 0 comments

I don't recall if I mentioned in any of my earlier posts, but for my wife's birthday back in August I bought her a trip to Minneapolis to go see Eric Clapton in concert at the XCel Energy Center.  In case you don't know, Suzanne is a HUGE fan of Clapton (her second love).  We were trying to recall but it is at least the eighth time, maybe as many as ten, that she has seen him in concert and this was going to be the fourth state.  I booked the airline, car rental, hotel, purchased the tickets, and arranged for baby and dog sitters for the weekend.  All she had to do was pack her stuff and come along.  BTW guys, if you want to score major brownie points, arrange a trip for your significant other where they don't have to plan or do anything.  All of Suzanne's friends and such said that was such an awesome gift. 

When I booked the trip, I narrowed down the locations to Minneapolis and Chicago.  Many of you will probably say that I picked the wrong city.  Well, I was thinking of my wife and she has mentioned more than once that she wanted to go the the Mall of America which is in Minneapolis.  Also, navigating around Minneapolis would be much easier than Chicago.  Finally, I've already spent a fair amount of time in Chicago so there wouldn't have been many new things for me to do there.  Almost forgot, the Minneapolis show was opening night for the US leg of the tour as well.

Saturday was the day of the concert so we flew out Friday night.  Saturday, we spent quite a bit of time at the mall.  I have to admit that I was pretty under-whelmed with it.  As it is called Mall Of America, you would expect all sorts of wonderful things.  In reality, it is just a pretty big mall.  Most of the stores we have here in Colorado so there wasn't much new or anything to get excited about.  There were a handful of stores that were unique to the area that were nice.  I will say that it was easy to get to and park at once you got there.  Also, there is an amusement park inside.  I would say that you shouldn't waste your time at the amusement park unless you have young kids (maybe less than 10 years old) with you.  There is also an aquarium there.  Suzanne and I tried to kill some time at the Aquarium on Sunday before our flight left but it was hard to do.  It didn't take much time and there wasn't much to do.  For $17 per adult I expected a lot more.  When you buy the tickets, it lists all of these different things that are included in the price.  Turns out, they are just the different sections of the tour.  It was cool to get to see the sharks but that was the only mildly interesting thing about it.  Again, better with young kids but probably not worth the price of admission.

So the first thing we tried to do at the mall was to go the the Ticket Master to buy tickets for The Who show coming to Denver in November.  As Saturday was the first day tickets went on sale, I wanted to get them ASAP to try to get some good seats.  We could have hung around the hotel and done it online, but that would have meant that we got our day started a couple of hours later than we wanted.  After standing in line for 15 minutes waiting for my turn, I was told that they only sold tickets for shows in the Midwest despite being a "Full-fledged Ticketmaster Outlet-including first-day sales".  Grrrrrrrrr!  They were able to give us the local number for Ticket Master so I called ASAP and got tickets that way (much slower than online BTW!).

On Friday, when I dropped the kids off at my parents, I helped them move an old antique bed out of the house.  In the process, my white t-shirt got filthy dirty so I changed into one of my tees I packed for the trip.  This provided me with the perfect excuse to buy a new one so I wouldn't have to wear one more than a single day.  We hit Pro Image sports and I found a cool Yankees tee.  I later went back as there was also a sweet Hawaiian "Aloha" Yankees shirt that will make for excellent Aloha Friday (any Friday) garb.  We also found a sweet hoodie for my son that we will probably save until Christmas.  Outside of food, we didn't do much other shopping.  We got both of the kids a toy and treat and found our traditional vacation Christmas ornament but that was about it.  Suzanne did toy with the idea of getting a MOA tee from the MOA gift shop inscribed with "Git R done" but opted out.

We got to the concert in plenty of time to find reasonably close and cheap parking and go check out the concert merchandise.  Suzanne found a nice concert tee that she bought and we still had time to get drinks and find our seats before the concert started.  The warm up band was the Robert Cray Band.  I've seen him and his band at least two other times before other shows as well.  If you like blues, you probably like Robert Cray.  Clapton always hand picks his warm up bands so it is a pretty good bet that it will be a good show.  I actually found out about Robert Randolph and the Family band at another Clapton show.  Cray played maybe 35-40 minutes and then Clapton followed about 30 minutes later.

Clapton jumped in with Pretending, I Shot the Sheriff, and Got To Get Better in a Little While.  Definitely a nice start to the show.  The next song, Old Love, is not one of my favorites but the way they played it blew me away.  Robert Cray joined Clapton on stage for Old Love as well as the encore which was Crossroads.  Next was Everybody Oughta Make A Change.  Before the show, I had told Suzanne that I wouldn't mind missing some of the usual songs you here at just about every Clapton concert, such as Cocaine, I Shot the Sheriff, and After Midnight, if he would play some of his older stuff such as Motherless Children.  Although he didn't skip any of the above songs, the next song was Motherless Children which I've never seen in concert before.  A real treat indeed!  By this point, you could tell Clapton was having a blast.  All of the band members were smiling and joking with each other.

Next followed a nice four song acoustic sit down set consisting of Back Home, I Am Yours, Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out, and Running On Faith.  Next up, the band totally cranked up the show again and played some rocking tunes.  Each of the band members really got to show off their talents during these songs.  They consisted of After Midnight, Little Queen Of Spades (another that I've never seen in concert), Further On Up The Road, Wonderful Tonight, Layla (these two were Suzanne's favorites), and Cocaine.  Clapton always finds some amazing talent to be in his band.  This tour is definitely no exception.  It may actually be the most talent group that I've seen him with.  Among others, he had Doyle Bramhall II and Derek Trucks on guitar with him.  Freakin' sweet to say the least!  As I mentioned before, the band came back and played Crossroads with Robert Cray with the encore.

This show was so amazing with the number of rockin' blues tunes along with all the amazing talent that took turns doing incredible solos.  Add a sprinkling of Robert Cray in the mix and you have a recipe for an incredible evening.  You can check out the entire set list or other reviews as well if you don't believe me ;)

Posted @ 9/21/2006 09:20:00 AM | 0 comments

Congratulations to the New York Yankees for winning their ninth consecutive AL East Championship.  Next hurdle is to win their first playoff series.  However, there are still about ten days left in the season so the Yankees will rest many of their players and get themselves ready for their first opponent in the playoffs.  Go Yanks!!!

Posted @ 9/21/2006 08:36:00 AM | 0 comments

I've tried to post photos several times but the new blogging software that I've been trying doesn't like uploading a bunch of photos at once.  I'm going to try again and hope that it works.

Posted @ 9/12/2006 09:44:00 PM | 0 comments

I went riding today over my lunch break. There was nothing really special about the ride with the possible exception that the elk were out bugling. I just rode to the top of the Chief Hosa campground. For the most part, this ride is mostly just a dirt rode. It is about 8.5 miles round trip. My friend Steve and I have found a few pieces of offroad that we ride going down. However, outside of early spring when I'm trying to get in shape and get some miles in, I don't ride it much as it is pretty dull. The reason I mention my ride today is that the odometer on my bike computer passed eight hundred miles for the year. This may not sound like much but consider the following. My previous high for my yearly total was 466 miles. Also, my friends that ride both mountain and road bikes say that for every mile you ride on your mountain bike offroad, it is like 2-3 miles on a road bike. If that is true, then that would put me somewhere between 1600 and 2400 road miles for the year. Not too shabby. Depending on how our fall weather goes, I'm hoping to at least get to 900 and if I'm really lucky maybe 1000. Then it will be time to hit the trainer in the basement until next spring...

Posted @ 9/11/2006 03:45:00 PM | 0 comments

I think I might have done a post or two, along with a comment, about the new Microsoft software, Windows Live Writer.  Those of you that are not techno geeks, it is a new program from Microsoft that will allow the uber geeks to create blog entries like this one that you are reading.  I have both praises and complaints that I hope the folks at Microsoft will pay attention to as I think it will help make this a better review (although so far it doesn't seem to be helping my typing skills though you probably cannot tell with the spell checker).  The first thing I have to compliment Microsoft on is the program setup.  For the blogs that I maintain, it was very easy to setup all of the configuration.  It was a little confusing about which login and password to enter when I was I was setting up my blog account where there is one password for my blog another for my FTP account for items such as pictures and what not.

The next thing that I REALLY like is the WYSIWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get).  The first version (???) of the software that I have downloaded on my work machine was not as effective as the current version that I am using on my home machine, but I it is really awesome to be able to type and layout photos the way that I want them to display on my blog!  I cannot say enough about this feature as all of my blog tools really fell short in this department.  This tool shows everything from my links, to the font, to the background that the end users will see.  None of the other applications could provide me with a REALISTIC view of what the post would look like once it was posted to my blog.

So far I have not said many negative items about Windows Live Writer.  However, I have to say that I do not like how it posts photos.  I have admit that I have not tried it a lot, but the couple of times that I have it will not post all of the photos that I want to post if there are more than a couple of photos.  If there are more than one or two photos, it seems to give me a vague error, if I get one at all, about uploading (?) them to my blog site.  I will try this more to see if it is the software or just my the current settings that I used.  However, I think that if I had to choose between my current blog software, w.bloggar, and Windows Live Writer, that I would probably choose w.bloggar because it uploads photos immediately so I don't have any concern if the post will work, as well as it is much more reliable and consistent.

One feature that I appreciate about Microsoft Windows Live Writer is the automatic functionality when you post pictures.  More specifically is when you post a photo is that it will post a small version of the photo that use can click on to get a large version.  Way cool!

I look forward to the next version of the software to see if MS addresses any of these issues.  I will continue to play with it as well and let you know about anything that I really like or dislike.

Posted @ 9/09/2006 08:33:00 AM | 0 comments

OK, so I think I have the blogging bug.  Actually, in all reality, I probably have a nice beer buzz and am getting gabby.  Those of you that are really close to me know that I rarely get gabby, but after a few beers, I do loosen up a little bit.  ;)

This first post is about another beer review.  I went to my usual Friday afternoon hangout (Union Liquors) and went in search of some new trouble potions.  :)  This time around I bought four new beers that I have never tried before.  I have not tried each of them yet as it has been less than twenty-four hours, but I did try one of them (multiple times ;) ).  The first one I tried was the 471 Small Batch Double Hopped IPA by Breckenridge Brewery.  Breckenridge is a local brewery and one that I have tried many times.  This beer, however, is one that I have not experienced before.  I have enjoyed many of the Breck Brews before so I had fairly high expectations for this one.  There were a couple of reasons I had high expectations.  The first was the brewery, as mentioned, and the second was that it was a doubled hopped IPA.  Any of the regular readers will know that I love hoppy (AKA bitter) beers.  When I was at Union Liquors, I saw another double hopped IPA and it was $11 for a four pack for I figured this one was bargain at $7. 

Although I cannot complain about the beer, I cannot brag much about it either.  It as another IPA to add to the collection but nothing to write home about.  It is very smooth and goes down easy, but the flavor isn't one that says, "oh yeah, come to me baby" (AKA a very hoppy beer).  For a beer that is a double IPA, I was expecting a bit more from the flavor department.  This beer fits in well with many other IPA's that I've tried, but as a double IPA, it doesn't get the job done.  So overall I would probably give it three out of five stars.

Happy Trails!

p.s.  Good thing I spell checked this post as I must have misspelled at least 10% of the words.  :P

Posted @ 9/08/2006 09:48:00 PM | 0 comments