The Snake [Story] That Wouldn't Die

Remember this story, the one about the 97 pound rattlesnake that's appeared -- and been killed -- in every county in Texas, plus one or two in New Mexico and Oklahoma?

Well, it's taking on new life, albeit with an amusing twist. The really funny stuff takes place in the comments. If you can't spare the time to read 'em all, at least read the official explanation.

I just wish we'd gotten a look at the photo. Perhaps there's still hope for a nude-shark-stabbing photo. (I left that sentence intentionally grammatically vague.)

Getting out of the 'sphere and into the real world

I spent an enjoyable two hours this afternoon with Bob Westbrook, chief pixel wrangler over at Ran with the Devil, Walked with Angels. Bob may be the only blogger in Stanton; I feel pretty safe in saying that he's the only Yankee blogger in Stanton (in case you haven't kept up, he and his wife recently relocated to west Texas from Ohio, but Bob has lived in Texas on prior occasions, so I'm playing the Yankee card just to give him a hard time).

Bob's got a great life story, and he's using his blog to try to convey some of the lessons he's learned over the years. These are lessons having to do with the human spirit and God's grace and the stomach-churning roller coaster ride that we call life.

It's always fun to get to meet a fellow blogger, and I appreciate Bob taking the time to drive over from Stanton. We also got to confirm that the free WiFi at the south-side IHOP works as advertised, and the overall service is attentive and friendly -- especially at 3:00 p.m.

Using "the day before" in ads: Offensive or Effective?

What do you think of this?

Or this?

How about this?

The ad agency has turned icons of tragedy into fodder for selling newspapers. It's a technique that's breathtaking in its audaciousness.

It also makes me want to lose my breakfast. But, hey -- that's just me.

Can't help wondering if they've already dispatched photographers to the Virginia Tech campus for round 2.

Via AdRants

Nostalgic Play

I'm not sure why -- perhaps because it rained all day and I couldn't get outside -- but yesterday my mind turned to some of the activities that constituted playtime when I was a kid. They all took place outdoors; "play" just didn't happen inside the house, not because it was forbidden, but because all the fun stuff was outside.

Here's my Big Five Old Time Playtime list (in no particular order). Maybe some of you old far...uh, more mature folks can relate to some of this:

• Homemade stilts -- Take a couple lengths of 2x4s and nail a short block to each at the height you think you can manage. Use them to stride regally across vacant lots, impervious to red ant beds, goatheads, and other [mostly imaginary] enemies. Also a good way to learn about physics, and weight-to-nail-effectiveness ratios.


• Kick the Can -- Ingredients for this one are equally simple: as many neighborhood kids as you can round up, a warm summer evening, and one (1) can, preferably a big stewed tomato can. They were all made out of tin back then, you know. Our backyard wasn't fully fenced, as I recall, and we could set up the can in the middle of it then range throughout the neighborhood for a couple of blocks in all directions. The darker it got, the more fun it was.


• Climbing the school swing set -- We lived across the alley from the elementary school, and it had a big honking' set of swings, the kind that would bring down OSHA fines and lawsuits if they were used today. The frame was heavy pipe -- drill pipe, perhaps? -- and fifteen feet tall. The swings were heavy lengths of 2x12s suspended by stout chains. I climbed those chains and pipes until my hands were black from the silver paint they were coated with. To this day, I can still climb trees and fences with a skill that might surprise you.


• Underground bunker -- This may be a guy thing, although I suspect a few tomboys probably enjoyed digging tunnels and hiding in them. We had vacant lots all around us, and our masterpiece was a pit about three feet square and the same amount deep, covered with plywood and camouflaged with dirt and debris on top so that we could make strange noises in an attempt to frighten and/or confuse the garbage collectors driving down the alley. I don't think it ever worked. I also don't know what the owner of the vacant lot thought about our excavation project.


• Flattened can bike skidding -- OK, this was a classic. I miss doing this to this day. You find a flattened can in the middle of the street. You get it in your sights, build up a head of steam on your bike, and just as the rear wheel starts to roll over the can, you hit your coaster brake. If you've timed the operation perfectly, you can skid half a block while generating an awful sound of scraping metal, leaving a trail of sparks. I'm sure it wasn't as dramatic as we imagined, but in our minds, it was a thing of beauty.

Got any childhood recreational activities you care to share?

Storms

I spent more than an hour yesterday cleaning off the back porch, hosing down the lawn furniture, scrubbing the accumulated gunk off the patio, beating the dust out of the chair pads. It left everything nice and tidy -- an inviting place to sit and observe the world from our back yard.

Which is what I'm doing as I type this, and the world I'm observing is dominated by a rapidly passing thunderstorm, one in a line that has pounded across west Texas since early morning, dropping an inch of welcome rain and washing the countryside as clean as our patio.

The current storm was preceded by a lightening of the clouds, to the point where it seemed that the sun might actually break through. I was hoping for a rainbow. But the clouds began to re-thicken, and lightning was barely perceptible in the southern sky. Soon, the dark line of clouds filled the sky, and deafening cracks of thunder blasted almost simultaneously with the lightning strikes which seemed to be mere blocks distant. The rain followed, hard but brief, coming straight down -- thankfully, the storm packed no significant winds, straight-line or rotating. That absence of wind allowed me to remain outside, in the chaise lounge, tapping away on the keyboard while God pounded His own keys.

The sky is bright once more, with the storm migrating north, the thunder receding to the edge of consciousness. I'm still serenaded by a steady drip from the short gutter over the exposed side of our patio, a reminder that even in west Texas, gutters need to be cleaned out more often than once a decade.

The Weather Channel's website informs me that we have an 80% chance of more rain tonight, and a 90% chance tomorrow. I can't think of many better blessings in the desert than a good day of rain followed by the prospect of even more.

Random Thursday: The Friday Edition

Pondering some trivialities while strategizing how best to reveal the fact that I'm actually Miss America from 1978, working a long-term undercover operation.

• Two of my favorite TV ad "franchises" are those for Rozerem (the prescription "sleep aid") and Jimmy Dean Sausage (touting its nutritious and delicious microwave breakfasts). The latter may be a regional thing -- I don't know if Big John has gone national or not -- but it features characters dressed up as celestial bodies (and I'm not referring to Jessica Simpson) and meteorological phenomenon. I especially like the one where a despondent guy dressed as a waning moon (which could, of course, be part of his problem) is confronted by the perpetually up-beat guy dressed as the sun (he never breaks a sweat). "Hey," says the sun, "I thought you were supposed to be full." "I'm not feelin' it," responds the moon. The sun breaks out breakfast and the next shot shows the moon swollen to full girth. The Deanster obviously doesn't care about the subliminal message, and the whole concept is funny.


• I'm sure everyone with a TV is familiar with the Rozerem spots, wherein a sleepless guy is confronted by characters from his dreams: a hip but achingly sympathetic Abe Lincoln (does anyone still dream about Abe?), a sardonic beaver (real subtle, guys...like we didn't all go to junior high at some point in our lives), and a disturbingly anonymous deep sea diver (which a friend mistook for an astronaut, to his eternal embarrassment). I like the way the main ad is followed by a throw-away scene seemingly created just for entertainment, like the one where Abe is playing folded-paper-placekicker using the annoyed beaver as the goalpost.


• One of our local early morning news anchors has acquired the habit of announcing the time with these words: "The time on the clock is..." At first, I found this to be annoying -- cue the beaver -- but have since realized that she's simply being accurate. In the immortal words of Chicago, does anyone really know what time it is? Of course not. We have eleven clocks in our home, and the best we can do is hope to average their displays to try to figure out whether we're late or not. (We are.) So that anchorette is simply providing us with a reference point which we can choose to accept or not. She could say, "I don't know what time you think it is, and I also don't know whether our means of measuring time is accurate, but the best I can do for you is to point out that our clock says this." I can live with that.


• Note to Apple: Would it just kill you guys to give us a full minute to sample music in the iTunes Store? I mean, I just checked and your market cap is $85B, you have $6.5B in cash, you're not paying any dividends, and I'm assuming that you have, like, a mega-T1 line or something so that bandwidth shouldn't be a problem. You'd still have enough money left over to cover legal fees and fines related to those backdated options.


• Well, for that matter, Apple, why don't you just downsample the music to something like 96kbps, put it in mono, and let us listen to the whole dang song? The people who'd use AudioHijack to steal it instead of buying it aren't going to buy it anyway, and you'd more than make up for it by selling additional copies to people who aren't willing to risk 99 cents on an inadequate test drive.


• OK, if neither of those options works as a Store-wide policy, why not let each artist decide the length and quality of the sample you provide?

By the way, I'm taking a cue from the Pointy-Haired Boss and letting Abbye handle the rest of my posts today. After reading the previous one, she's thinking it's way past time.

Dunbar's Number: Mark of the Decreased

A special welcome to those coming here via Jeremy Keith's follow-up post in which he ridicules my attempt to discuss a sociological phenomenon within a Christian context. That's OK, although he really got a bit derivative with his post title.

I confess that I'd never heard of Dunbar's Number until I came across a reference to it in this post in which the author, Jeremy Keith, explains his rather unique approach to dealing with comments on his blog (he collects them for a period of time and then shuts them off, reviews those submitted prior to the deadline, and then publishes all the acceptable ones at the same time, in one batch). Jeremy's reference sent me to the relevant Wikipedia entry where I learned that Dunbar is a British anthropologist and "evolutionary psychologist" who contends that the size of the human brain's neocortex is the limiting factor in determining the optimal size of any given person's social group (I'm simplifying to the extreme here). He's even computed that number, which is 150.

Put another way, 150 is the average number of people with whom we've sufficiently cultivated relationships to the extent that we can ask them to do us a favor and they'll likely comply.

This theory has widespread implications in many facets of our lives. For example, it could explain why it's more difficult to make new close friends after we reach a certain age; we've already reached our quota, so to speak, and we just don't have the capacity to enlarge our social sphere -- unless we drop someone else.

[For bloggers, it might also explain why it's darned difficult to maintain active online relationships with other bloggers beyond a certain point, and why gaining increased readership and comments quickly reaches a point of diminishing psychological returns. We may need to visit this issue in a separate post.]

A more significant -- in my opinion, anyway -- implication to Dunbar's theory is that the other six-billion-minus-150 people on earth aren't important to us in any personal way. They're statistics, or news items, or members of a huge crowd of beings whose lives have no qualities apart from those that might impact ours (as in, for example, serving us our food in a restaurant, or cleaning our teeth, or mowing our yards).

Dunbar has done research to qualitatively support his thesis, and the number 150 (actually, it's 147.8, but who's counting?) apparently has statistical verifiability. However, from my perspective, he's left out one crucial factor: Jesus Christ.

Christ's Dunbar Number is -- to quote a popular movie character -- "like, infinity." His ability to love, accept, listen to, interact with, minister to, care about, and save has no limit. He doesn't see nameless faces, or faceless crowds, or crowded planets. He sees -- and knows -- individuals.

And here's the thing: He wants us to be the same way. He calls us to a life of ministry and service and caring that doesn't stop once we check 150 people off the list. Obviously, we can't know everyone like He does (truthfully, we can't know anyone like that, not even ourselves), but that doesn't let us off the hook for understanding the importance of trying.

I don't mean to give the impression that I know how to do this, because I don't. There are a lot of people whom I don't know how to care about, much less love. But I'm pretty sure that God can and will provide us with the means to remove the caps on our personal Dunbar numbers if we'll but seek to do so.

And failing to do that lessens us all.

Big Brother Gets Bigger

I was well into a post about how I'm fighting global warming by using my bike to run errands when I googled up some critical research and noticed this:

I'm not the most observant guy in the world and this "web history" notice may have been appearing on Google's search results pages for months -- but it's news to me. (That brings up a whole other issue about the effectiveness of such notices on Google's pages, given the single minded focus on search results.) Anyway, does this concept creep anybody else out?

Basically, as I understand it, what Google is doing is co-opting your browser's history file, recording every page you visit and storing that history on its own servers. If that was all it entailed, it might not be so scary, but when you combine that data with everything else Google knows about you (via your Gmail account), and then add all of that to the ad-delivery capabilities of the company's newest acquisition, DoubleClick, then you start to paint a truly fearsome picture that has privacy implications as well as a high personal annoyance factor.

Here's a blurb from Google's Web History Privacy FAQ:

Google's corporate motto may be "do no harm," but as it continues to expand the scope of what's included in "our services," the potential for that motto to cease to have any meaning other than "do no harm to Google's business plan" grows proportionately larger. Already the company has shown questionable judgment in areas such as cooperation with repressive governments.

The mitigating factor is that Web History is an opt-in feature, and thus we each can assess our personal tolerance of the risk involved in turning our data over to Google's stewardship. But you've probably figured out by now that I plan to stay as far away from Web History as I can. The truly scary thing is that Google probably already knew that.

Technorati tag: Google Web History

Signs of Impending Armageddon - #1,238

If you think that God doesn't have a sense of humor, consider this. As of a moment ago (things may have changed by the time you read this) the #8 best-selling music CD at Amazon.com is Donny Osmond's "Love Songs of the 70s."

And for those who are still truly committed to the album concept, consider this. Does the world really need another version of Gilbert O'Sullivan's suicidally whiny Alone Again Naturally*?

*And, pray tell, how is this a love song, exactly?

Web Design Survey

One of the things my profession lacks is a survey. Every profession needs a survey to validate its importance as a, well, profession. This lack of a survey has been a source of frequent embarrassment in social gatherings, and even in more intimate surroundings. However, thanks to the crafty and insightful folks over at A List Apart, all that is now behind me and my profession.

Seriously, though, if you're in the web design or development business, drop by and take the survey. The benefits of having a growing database of results are admittedly unclear to me, but I've pretty much always subscribed to the theory that more data is better than less data. And you could win valuable prizes!

Cover Art Contest

Update #2: I do have to wonder what will happen when Google caches THIS copy of the post. Can the two co-exist without tearing asunder the very fabric of the below-referenced universe? Stay tuned...

Update (4/25): Thank goodness for Google's cache, into which a copy of this post was written mere hours after it was published, thereby allowing me to resurrect it after I inadvertently overwrote it with a new post. The order of the universe has been restored.

Oh, and Bob (guessed the artist name) and Rachel (guessed the song title) are still the joint winners of the contest.

Here's a softball of a contest. Identify the group and Side A of the 45 associated with this jacket:

I have to make a quick trip out of town and may not be able to monitor your responses, but I'll be back later this evening and we can settle up then.

Changes

I was about halfway through a post in which I was sharing my wisdom about gun control and related issues when it hit me with magnum force (ha): this isn't any fun.

Blogging in general hasn't been much fun for the past couple of months, in fact, with a few exceptions. And those exceptions have been good reminders that I somehow lost my way. I got busy trying to be a pundit (I don't even know what that is, but that didn't stop me from aspiring to be one), thinking that my insights and perceptions were really key to straightening out the rest of the world.

Well, that's all gonna change, starting now. You'll have to go elsewhere for pith, angst, schadenfreude -- no, wait; strike that...schadenfreude falls into the category of "fun" -- and overarching politosocioecocraponomic commentary. There are plenty of folks linked over in the right-hand column who provide that stuff and who have the added benefit of actually knowing what they're talking about.

So, look for shorter posts about trivial subjects which are guaranteed not to put ideas in your head that will cause you to lose sleep. That's my pledge to you. No, really. I'm dead serious. Content Free™ is back, baby!

But first, I have to go eat a sandwich.

Random Accomplishment

Bret and the RFCCT (Random Family Charity Cycling Team) did a wonderful thing over the weekend. While you and I were napping in preparation for the Mavericks to lose yet again to one of the lesser teams in the NBA, Bret & Co. successfully completed the Houston-to-Austin MS 150 bike ride, raising four grand in the process.

Drop by and leave your congrats to Bret, but don't feel overly honored if he remains standing in your presence. That's just the normal aftereffect of riding 150 miles in two days.

Next up in the Blogger Charity Ride Series: Foo's North Texas MS150 over the first weekend in May.

Saved by a Reader: A Writing Exercise

A blogger's best friend is a reader who, sensing said blogger is in dire need of a swift kick in the pants, does not hesitate to provide a gentle nudging. And so I'm grateful to Deborah for suggesting the following exercise:

I offer three words, which you can use any way you choose: blacktop, thundercloud, remote control.

It's a splendid suggestion, and here's my stab at it:

The two-lane highway stretched arrow straight to the horizon, where it took a sharp upward bend and merged seamlessly with the storm percolating up from some fey place in the Sonoran desert. Speckled with a billion volts of primal current, the thundercloud made the distant oncoming cars, with their headlights shimmering in the dusk, appear as toys on a Hot Wheels track, governed by a remote control in the hands of God himself.

The man gripped the leather-wrapped steering wheel a little tighter, staring down the blacktop as the hairs on the back of his neck prickled, resonating with the memory of the last time he confronted this tableau. The dog-like creature laying in the passenger seat lifted its head, glanced at the unholy cloud, and grinned at the man. "It's going to be an interesting night, amigo."

The driver did not return the grin.

Feel free to provide your own take on Deborah's suggestion. If you're feeling really feisty, continue my story...

I'm still here...

...despite all appearances to the contrary.

Posting will resume when I come up with something interesting or intelligent to write.

Gee, I almost was able to type that with a straight face. Don't worry; we're not changing the criteria for posts around here.

Baseball Class

I'll admit it: I'm not a baseball fan. I find most televised baseball games exceedingly boring and I can't remember the last time I watched one. I surely wouldn't normally watch a game between the Dodgers and the Padres.

Having said that, I'll also admit that sitting here and watching Rachel Robinson talk about her late husband's career, and the state of baseball today, from the booth of ESPN's broadcast of the LA/San Diego game is a privilege. She's an articulate and passionate spokesperson, not only for the legacy of the first man to cross the "color barrier" in big league baseball, but for baseball overall, and for civil rights as well.

I salute ESPN's wisdom in inviting her into the broadcast booth -- and especially for giving her free reign to speak her mind (including rooting openly for Los Angeles, which is fun). And I salute the LA Dodger players, all of whom are wearing number 42 in honor of Jackie Robinson (as did many other players around the league today).

And thus, I must make one final admission: baseball is more than just a sport, in many ways. It's an integral part of America and American history. Even a non-fan should be able to recognize that.

Writing Exercise: Big Finish

My friend Sherry reminded me of something we did on this here blog a few months back, where I challenged readers to come up with the opening sentence of a novel or story in which a specific item -- in this case, a broken key -- was featured. She thought that was fun, and I did too, once I remembered we'd done it (she's younger than me, as she's quick to remind everyone who'll listen).

I came up with a twist on that theme and figured I'd run it up the flagpole and see if anyone tossed their cookies. Here's the new challenge:

Craft the closing sentence -- or paragraph -- of a novel or story in which the following elements played key roles: the Solomon Islands, a black Sharpie, and a ferret.

Leave your entry in the comments or email it to me and I'll add it. This is not a competition, but the winner gets untold acclaim.

Easter Hill Country Tour 2007

For the past 20+ years, we've spent Easter weekend in the Fredericksburg/Kerrville area of the Texas Hill Country, participating in the aptly named Easter Hill Country Tour, a bicycling event jointly sponsored by the bike clubs of Fort Worth, Lubbock, San Antonio, and Houston. This year's event was the 34th annual tour, and will go down in history as one of the most interesting, thanks primarily to the wintry weather conditions.

Over the years, as we've, um, matured (read: grown wiser), this event has become less about the bicycling and more about enjoying our time together. In the beginning, we were avid (read: stupid) cyclists and rode a couple of centuries -- or, to the uninitiated, 100 mile rides completed in one day. I'm sure there are more difficult feats that the average non-athlete could attempt, but I'm not interested in confirming it.

Nowadays, if we ride 100 miles in three days we're quite pleased with ourselves, and we've found that we can eat just as much -- the real reason people cycle -- plus there's the added bonus of actually being able and willing to get back on the bike without waiting a month.

However, this year's trip holds the distinction of providing the lowest cycling/driving mileage ratio of any that we've taken: almost 800 miles of driving in order to ride 42.4 miles on a bike. More on that later.

Because I'm such a considerate and thoughtful host (read: OCD), I've organized this report into sections, and you can use the following links to skip to the one(s) you find potentially interesting. (I've not, however, provided a link to the bottom of the post so that you can skip the whole thing. Shame on you for even thinking that.)

Sections: The Riding | The Eating | The Bedding & Breakfasting | The Nature Gazing

The Riding

As with most EHCTs, the schedule for the three day weekend consisted of several routes on Friday leaving from Fredericksburg, several routes on Saturday (including the traditional century) leaving from Kerrville, and a couple of relatively short rides on Sunday morning to wrap things up.

We normally try to arrive on Wednesday afternoon in order to do a self-guided ride on Thursday, but MLB's work schedule didn't allow us to leave until Thursday after lunch. Thus we weren't able to get on the bike until Friday morning around 10:30, when we departed from the Fredericksburg courthouse and headed north out of town. Our route took us up Lower Crabapple Road, then to the west within glimpsing distance of the amazing Enchanted Rock, and finally back south into town on the Old Mason Highway until it met up with Highway 87. We could have stretched the route to almost 60 miles with various optional additions, but since our tandem training mileage this year totaled on 130 miles, and despite our realization that the weather forecast didn't bode well for the rest of the weekend, we decided that discretion was the better part of valor.

The ride was enjoyably challenging, hard enough to feel a sense of accomplishment without ever having to resort to on-bike crying (never a good sign). We rode all the hills (not everyone did, but being 70 years old is always a valid excuse in my book), and had some interesting conversations at the rest stops. Our recumbent tandem usually guarantees that we'll get to visit with a few people who are fascinated by the contraption.

We finished the ride feeling as though we could have gone further, but not regretting stopping when we did, particularly since the clouds were beginning to thicken, a precursor to the front that was about to hammer all of Texas.

Here are a few photos snapped by MLB from the back of the bike during the ride; click to view a full-sized uncropped version. From left to right: a view of Enchanted Rock on the steep downhill section of Welgehausen Road, just west of Hwy 965; bluebonnets along Welgehausen Road; more bluebonnets.

The Eating

"Eat to ride. Ride to Eat." That's the cyclist's mantra, and it works remarkably well, even when moderation is exercised on neither account.

Fredericksburg is home to some excellent restaurants, and even though our stay was shorter than usual, we made sure to patronize two of them. We ate dinner Friday night at the restaurant at the Fredericksburg Herb Farm, a cozy little eatery surrounded by all manner of flora, much of which makes it into the dishes the chef prepares.

We took a chance and walked in without reservations -- we tried to call ahead but our cell phones weren't playing well with the local service -- and waited while the hostess consulted with the chef to make sure we were worthy of the honor. I assume we looked sufficiently solvent, and so we were seated, and at one of the prime tables at that. Never underestimate the value of wearing a Fire Ant Gazette hoodie into the finest dining establishments. (Kidding. Really.)

MLB had a fine talapia cooked en papillote, prepared with "Mexican herbs" and served with green rice. Muy delicioso.

Not to be outdone, I had one of the off-menu specials, something you don't normally find in a sit-down restaurant with white linen tablecloths: cabrito. I'm here to tell you that if you ever have a chance to eat cabrito in that setting, don't pass it up. I didn't catch the waitress's explanation of the herbs used in the preparation, despite asking her to repeat it (there was something about "root beer flavor, but very mild"), but that was the best goat I've ever eaten, falling-off-the-bone tender and juicy in that way that only cabrito can be. Normally, Abbye would have benefited from a few carryout scraps, but she was out of luck that night. (I'd ask you not to tell her, but she sniffed my fingers as soon as we got home, and she knew. She's still not speaking to me.)

The only disappointment of the evening was dessert (and, really, that's major). We split a serving of Lemon Verbena Peach Cobbler (with homemade vanilla bean ice cream), and it wasn't up to the restaurant's usual standards. Of course, the last time we had their peach cobbler, it was in the middle of peach season so the fruit was fresh off the tree. Still, the crust was too doughy, and the lemon verbena was...weird. I don't recommend it (but if they have plain cobbler during the summer, go for it).

Pricing? Ooh, you don't want to know. We were pushing $100 and that was without wine.

Our dining destination Saturday night was our Plan B from Friday, in case we were turned away. Pasta Bella serves some of the best Italian food around, and it's a gem of a find right in the middle of this German community. There's nothing fancy here, just basic pasta dishes, and the usual parmigiana entrées. Again, we arrived without reservations, and we did have a short wait, but it was worth it. Normally on a Saturday night, you'd want to call ahead, but keep in mind that we were out in the middle of an ice storm, and that kept the crowd down a bit.

The food was typically good, tasty and filling, and much more reasonably priced than the night before. We were too full for dessert, and the total check was around $20.

Now, since we stayed in a bed-and-breakfast, you're probably wondering about our morning meals. I can sum them up in one word: awesome. I'll tell you more about the B&B a bit later, but I can tell you that the family that owns this one also owns another one on the other side of F'burg, managed by their son and daughter-in-law, and they both pride themselves on their excellent breakfasts. We've stayed in B&Bs where "breakfast" was a couple of cold muffins left on the kitchen table the night before, and whatever you could find in the mini-fridge.

This place, on the other hand, delivered a full hot breakfast each morning. Day one was an oven pancake, bacon (cleverly folded in a way to resemble flowers) and fresh fruit; day two was baked (!) eggs, sausage, made-from-scratch biscuits and fresh fruit in yogurt dressing; day three was a breakfast casserole (eggs, sausage, cheese, bread and mushrooms) and more fruit. We boxed up half the casserole and had it leftover when we returned to Midland -- the servings were not skimpy.

Earlier, I computed our driving-to-cycling mileage, because I'm a numbers guy, like it or not. However, I refuse to calculate (or even think about) our calories-consumed-to-cycling-mileage.

The Bedding and Breakfasting

Well, I've already covered the Breakfasting, but here's the skinny on the accommodations. The B&B is called Clear Springs Log Cabin, and it's owned and operated by Vernon and Bernice Fluitt (their son and his wife, Nelson and Sharon, manage another excellent B&B called the Country Quiet Guesthouse, which we also recommend highly). Clear Springs is located on a working ranch eight miles north of F'burg on Highway 16, and the main living area of the house was built in the 1850s. It served many years as a barn, but the Fluitts recently made it over into a B&B, adding a bedroom, bathroom, central heat and air, and other modern amenities.

The walls of the log cabin are at least twelve inches thick, highly reminiscent of adobe buildings found throughout west Texas. One section of the original log-and-mortar has been preserved behind glass (see image at right; click for a larger version), but the remainder of the walls have been re-mortared. We found the room to be pretty well insulated, but the HVAC system was also quite effective in dealing with any shortcomings in that area.

The bedroom is equipped with a very comfortable queen-sized bed. However, the room is lacking in storage space, especially for hanging clothes. The large antique wardrobe is more for show than function and will accommodate only three or four hangars.

The bathroom is very spacious, with a large jacuzzi tub (no shower, but the tub has a gooseneck spigot that's a fair compromise) and the only deer antler toilet paper holder I've ever seen. In fact, antlers were used everywhere in place of towel racks.

The kitchen is functional, but not luxurious, although the fridge appears new and works very well. There's no oven, but there is a stove, a microwave, and a countertop toaster/convection oven. We used only the fridge, microwave and coffeemaker. This was, after all, a vacation.

The weather wasn't exactly cooperative -- more about that below -- but the compound has several places that would be wonderful for al fresco coffee and snacks or book reading (a euphemism for napping, of course) in more temperate conditions.

I mentioned that this is a working ranch, and it's thus replete with the typical farm fauna: cattle, chickens, horses, geese -- and, of course, llamas. It's also got a couple of ponds, at least one of which is apparently stocked for fishing, if you care about such things.

It's also very, very quiet. Even though Highway 16 is a very busy road, the B&B is located more than a mile down an unpaved road (and over a couple of hills), and there are no neighbors within sight, other than the hosts' home (which is a couple hundred yards away). The log cabin has its own fenced yard, great for pets (although if you have a dog that doubles as an escape artist, you'll want to keep it leashed), and is imaginatively landscaped.

The Nature Gazing

The same vicious cold front that blasted much of the nation also dropped down into the Hill Country, with the worst weather blowing in early Saturday morning in the form of rain, sleet, and a bit of snow. Sunday morning's view of the woods surrounding the B&B was punctuated with breaking limbs falling under the weight of the ice, although most of what I saw were from the dead trees that polka-dot the landscape thanks to a recent onslaught of oak wilt throughout the Hill Country.

In the wee hours of Sunday morning, we were awakened by total silence combined with complete darkness. Funny how that works, isn't it? We never got an explanation of the power outage, but it lasted only a couple of hours, and it gave us an excuse to snuggle deeper under the blankets.

We discussed the outage with Vernon when he brought breakfast. He said that as soon as the power went off, he called the power company, and he and his wife started worrying about how it might impact us. Bernice was worried about how she'd fix our breakfast; Vernon wasn't worried about that as much as how we flush the toilet (the water system relies on electric pumps). I guess it's a guy thing, but that's also one of the first things that occurred to me at 3:00 a.m. when the power first went out.

Here are a few photos capturing the cold beauty of weather's aftereffects. Click on the thumbnails to view larger uncropped versions. Note the ice on the back of the reclining llama in the third photo. Think those guys aren't protected by their fur?

We had one final weather-related challenge, and that was driving through the ranch and back to the highway for the trip home. With our bike on top of the SUV we need about 12 feet of clearance, and the ice weighted the tree limbs lining the dirt road to the point where I was weaving like a drunken driver, trying to thread my way past the lowest branches while avoiding getting stuck in the bar ditch. Fortunately, I've had plenty of practice at this since That Thing Happened and we made a clean getaway.

Despite not getting in our usual quota of bicycling, this was a weekend to remember -- and almost all of the memories will be good ones. It's hard to ask for more than that.

Scary Weather in the Metroplex

As I type this The Weather Channel is reporting on "significant building damage" in the Fort Worth area from a tornado that's heading toward Irving and Dallas. This is bad stuff. It wasn't all that many years ago that a tornado did terrible damage to downtown Fort Worth.

Let's hope Cowtown Pattie and her posse are OK, as well as many others we know and care about in that area.

Good news for Patti

Patti's still got a long recovery ahead of her, but, man, is this ever good news.

I'm sure she'd appreciate your words of encouragement.

I picked a bad day to start taking Ritalin

I have no idea what the post title means. I just type what the voices tell me.

Oy, what a day. I've worked on 13 different websites -- 13! -- traveled to Odessa to meet with a new client -- new! -- and put $70 worth of gasoline in the truck and various containers -- explosive!

The really fun part is that I've generated exactly 95 minutes of billable time out of all that activity. Still, $12 is nothing to sneeze at.

OK, I'm pretty sure this counts as a post. Yes, I'm positive.

Oh look! A baby squirrel...

Political Ills

April 11 (AP) - Washington, D.C. -- Actor, former Senator, and potential presidential candidate Fred Thompson revealed today that he's been diagnosed with lymphoma. That revelation, coupled with the announcement that the wife of candidate John Edwards was suffering from a recurrence of breast cancer, has the other candidates scrambling to get on the personal health crisis bandwagon.

In a hastily called news conference just before noon, Democratic hopeful Barack Obama disclosed that he's been suffering from dengue fever and malaria, although, as he put it, "it's the good kind and won't really affect my plans."

The other Democratic front runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, staged her own press conference, expressing a desire that the American people understand very clearly that she, also, was a sick woman, having been diagnosed with chronic phlebitis. Then, adopting her now-famous faux Southern accent she revealed that she "is pretty sure she has a tapeworm the size of a garden hose." Senator Clinton also stated that she's been suffering from headaches for years, a fact quickly confirmed by her husband, former president Bill Clinton.

On the Republican side, Senator John McCain derided his opponents for what he termed "johnny-come-lately whiners," pointing out that he's had non-working body parts for longer than some of them have been alive.

The other leading Republican candidates, Rudy Guiliani and Mitt Romney, had no official comments but their campaign spokesmen confirmed that each was consulting with top physicians to identify what was wrong with them.

In a related announcement, the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia today released the findings of a study about the health effects of presidential campaigns. That study concluded that there was no correlation between the illnesses of candidates and their campaigns. However, the findings weren't so clearcut with regard to the voters.

Technorati tags: Fred Thompson | Campaigns make me queasy

Hill Country Trip Report Forthcoming

We made it home without incident this afternoon and I hope to have a complete report of our weekend posted within a day or so. Those of you who enjoy visiting the Fredericksburg area might want to stay tuned, because we (well, MLB, to be precise) found an absolute gem of a bed and breakfast that's far enough off the beaten path that you may not know about it. Yet.

Here's a teaser: picture a 150+ year old log cabin equipped with a jacuzzi tub, satellite TV, and -- as you've seen -- its own herd of llamas. Oh, and no telephone.

Heading home...

We're still about 2 1/2 hours from Midland, but I've always wanted to post from a rest stop on a Texas interstate. So now I have.

Very funny, Mother Nature...

I'm reporting live on the road from the little German town in the Texas Hill Country, Fredericksburg, where it's been raining, snowing, and sleeting for the past 12 hours. Good thing we got a long bike ride in yesterday, because that will do it for the weekend.

In the meantime, here's one of Abbye's new friends from the B&B we're calling home for a few days:

There's a small herd of llamas living out back, and they're fascinated by Abbye. They ignore us -- the humans -- but as soon as she appears in the back yard, they coming running from the pasture up to the fence to investigate her.

As far as I can tell, they couldn't care less about this weather.

Programming Note

Posting may be light-to-nonexistent around here for the next few days due to the Easter holiday...

...although...you never know what might show up here. ;-)

As always, quality bloggage is still available 24-7 from the fine folks listed in the right hand column.

"Dancing With the Stars": Handicapping the Field

Note: The following post may seem to edge dangerously close to obsessive. So be it. At least I'm not writing about something truly trivial, like, say, baseball.

We're a couple of weeks into ABC's Dancing With the Stars and it's time for me to weigh in with my observations and predictions. With almost two years of ballroom lessons under my belt, I feel I'm well qualified to recognize bad dancing when I see it, because I've seen a lot of it -- primarily on the videos of our lessons.

Two contestants have been voted off the show: alleged supermodel Paulina Poriskova and the wearyingly bubbly game show hostess, Shandi Finnessey. The fact that the shambling Clyde Drexler and the soporific Billy Ray Cyrus are still in the competition proves my pet theory about the show: it's a man's contest. Or, put another way, the female viewership vote is such that a woman will have to clearly outshine all male competitors to win. There's only one woman in this year's cast with the potential for doing that.

Here's my seeding for the next nine weeks of DWTS, from bottom to top (and please note that these are my predictions, not my preferences):

9. Clyde "The Glide" Drexler -- Clyde's no Emmitt Smith, and while the voters offset some of the harshest words from the judges we've heard to date, his fan base won't keep him on the court, uh, dance floor another week.


8. Leeza Gibbons -- Placing a [non-permanent] "Tramp" tattoo above her left breast in order to channel her inner rebel may have come across as saucy and edgy to some, but my general reaction was more akin to ewwww. She's a better dancer than the next two guys, but not good enough to overcome the gender gap.


7. Billy Ray Cyrus -- Billy Ray continues to do penance [all the way to the bank] for the unpardonable sin of performing a country song with mass commercial appeal, and because of that, I'd be happy to see him continue. But he's the Master P of this year's competition, and doesn't exhibit enough charisma to counter his lack of footwork.


6. John Ratzenberger -- The likable Cheers star is the token AARP rep, ala Jerry Springer last year and George Hamilton before that. He'll get some slack cut for old times' sake, and he's got the acting ability to sell the choreography, but the legs just aren't there to keep him in the show.


5. Heather Mills -- Heather has been a pleasant surprise to me, not for her dancing as much as for the way she seems to be truly enjoying the experience. She's more likable than I expected. Her partner is doing an amazing job of choreographing steps that minimize the impact of her prosthetic leg, using basic misdirection to allow a cooperative audience to happily ignore one unfortunate fact: she's just not that good as a dancer. And, despite assurances to the contrary at the beginning, it's difficult to believe that she's being judged with the same criteria as the top competitors. Nevertheless, her example is truly inspirational and a fifth place showing will be a non-trivial accomplishment.


4. Laila Ali -- Laila is, as everyone knows, Muhammed Ali's daughter, and a world champion boxer. She has her dad's moves, athleticism, and charisma -- but she's also got his mercurial temperament, and does not appear to suffer fools or losing lightly. That intensity works for her in the ring, but not so much in the eyes of the voting audience. If she'll soften her demeanor a bit, and loosen up on the floor, she could do better than I predict; she's got the talent to pull it off. Her main disadvantage is that she's a woman, and she'll have a hard time disguising that with choreography. [Now, here's the probably controversial sleeper factor: she's got that "Jennifer Hudson" build, and I'm sure there's a sizable segment of the female voters who can relate to and pull for her more than for some of her preternaturally skinny competitors.]


3. Ian Ziering -- I'd never heard of Ian before this show, and the fact that his name is pronounced "eye-ann" doesn't help his cause. But if this was just about the dancing, Ian would win, hands-down. He's likable, self-effacing, charming, and has the best moves. How can I say that? He's the only competitor whose minor mistake in the last dance was obvious enough to be (1) pointed out by the judges, (2) spotlighted on the show, and (3) recognized as it occurred by me. And how, you ask, does such an obvious mistake illustrate his superiority? Fair question, and it's simply because all the others had performances that were uniformly lackluster, such that their mistakes got lost in the shuffle. Unfortunately for Ian, this is not all about the dancing. [Wild card: Ian's paired with Cheryl Burke, who's won this contest twice in a row.]


2. Apolo Anton Ohno -- The Olympic gold medal speed skater is a fine athlete, and his sport's required skills -- balance and quick feet -- translate directly to the dance floor. His personality is more endearing than the somber focused shots from the Olympics would indicate. He's also drawn the perfect partner, first-time DWTSer Julianne Hough, whose youth and energy match well with Ohno's. Whether he can channel his athleticism into the necessary controlled precision remains to be seen, but the pair certainly can captivate when they're "on." I sense huge voter support from the under-21 crowd.


1. Joey Fatone -- Despite having, to paraphrase British judge Len Goodman, a "bum that sticks out there," former boy band member Fatone has the stage training and presence to win the whole thing. It's hard to figure out why he's allowed to compete with untrained dancers; just because he's never danced a traditional tango, for instance, doesn't make him any less a trained hoofer. You think that tight choreography displayed by NSYNC doesn't carry over to ballroom? Guess again. Anyway, next to Ian, he's got the best moves, and his fan base is off the chart. And it's not hurting him that he's paired with the stunning Aussie, Kym Johnson, who paid her dues last season as Jerry Springer's partner (and carried him to a much undeserved fifth place).

Now, given my woeful performance predicting outcomes in the NCAA men's basketball tournament, I wouldn't advise mortgaging the house to lay a big bet on any of the preceding prognostications.

Posted by Eric at 06:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Image Resolution: Clearing the Fog

Update: I've fixed the link to the article by adding, you know, an actual link. Sorry about that!

One of the most confusing areas of graphic design for many people seems to be image resolution. How does one go about making sense of DPI, pixel size, print size, etc?

While I can't guarantee that you'll find the answers to all of your questions in this area, I do think that this article is one of the better attempts at bringing the issues into clearer, um, resolution.

Client: "Send me bigger bills that I can ignore"

You know, you really should raise your rates a bit. You are selling yourself way short for the services you are performing.

Quick quiz. The source of the preceding statement is:

As a punchline in the "Big Book of Freelance Website Design Jokes"

That hazy world of early morning REM sleep just before the alarm ruins a perfectly fine dream

An actual client email in response to receipt of a bill for website maintenance.

If you chose the third option, you're obviously delusional -- but you're also correct.

I responded to this amazing observation...

Thanks for your concern about my fees. However, you may be overestimating the time it takes to perform a lot of the maintenance work that I do. The updates you requested below, for example, took all of two minutes to complete. Even if I raised my rates 50% that would still work out to a whopping $2.

I've seen folks do thirty minutes worth of work and charge $100 just because the client couldn't do the work for himself, and while he may be willing to pay, I have a hard time believing that any webwork is worth $200 an hour.

But my client wasn't finished...

Hey, remember it's your expertise that matters, not just the amount of time you spend. Our doctors can do a cataract surgery in 4 minutes, but patients pay because they're the best! I still think you should raise your rates.

I've said all along that web design isn't brain surgery; maybe I'm using the wrong medical comparison. Plus, I thought we were paying for malpractice insurance, not expertise.

What's the point of sharing this? Only that I had to send a second notice a month later. I guess my first invoice was too small to take seriously.*

*In the client's defense, I learned that family business had intervened shortly after my invoice arrived, and it got lost in the shuffle. I understand completely. I simply found the whole situation amusing and ironic.

A Writer's Advice

There's a meme going around disguised as an award, and it's called "The Thinking Blogger Award." It's supposed to provide recognition to bloggers whose posts are thought-provoking, but since The Gazette has been nominated a couple times, the vetting process is obviously flawed. Nevertheless, if anyone deserves such an award, it's Deb Thompson over at Write Lightning, for a body of work that's uniformly high in quality, but especially for this post in which she bestows some valuable advice for anyone who would be known as a writer.

Her reminders hit close to home, as I can read the list of important things I should or should not be doing, and my mental checklist informs me that I've been failing on every count. I'm not reading, I'm not staying engaged in friends' lives, I'm not allowing myself to stray from a to-do list in order to interact with a non-orderly world, I'm not trying to figure out what God made me to be...much less being that person.

And it shows on these "pages." Surely you've noticed (and, thankfully, been too kind to point it out), but whether you have or not, I have.

I'm not sure what to do about it, but I thank Deb for articulating so well what I've been feeling, and for providing some clarity. It's hard to find answers until you know the problems.

Another loss in The Neighborhood

Please join me in sending condolences to Jennifer and Brian in the death of their oh-so-very-good dog, Carla, who succumbed to cancer yesterday. She will be missed.

Suddenlink Server for 3rd Party Email

If you're one of the thousands of Suddenlink subscribers currently wallowing in the mess of switching your email address from Cox, and you also want to be able to send email via Suddenlink using a non-Suddenlink email address, AND you haven't been able to get a response from Suddenlink about how to configure your mail program to accomplish this, here are the instructions I got from them a mere two weeks after submitting the question:

The outgoing server information for third party emails are the following :

does not required authentication

That last line is important, as Suddenlink's regular SMTP server does require authentication.

Now, having provided this information, I have to admit that I'm not sure why it's needed, as I've been able to send email without a hitch using via my ericsiegmund.com address and Suddenlink's regular outgoing mail server. But if you're having problems with a similar arrangement on your system, perhaps this will help. YMMV.

No Beatles (yet), but no DRM, either...

Sorry for the string of iTunes and digital music posts, but that's just what's catching my attention nowadays. We'll soon return you to our regular Content Free™ posting as soon as I can...oh, look! A baby squirrel!

Steve Jobs big joint announcement with music company EMI did not include the hoped-for news that the Beatles' music catalog would be available via the iTunes Store, but it may be even more significant for those who purchase and download their music.

EMI has agreed to release its entire music and video catalog free of a Digital Rights Management (DRM) scheme, meaning that the downloads can be played on any digital music player, and the purchaser can copy it to his or her heart's content. Even better, this new DRM-free content will be encoded (at least on the iTunes Store) at twice the bit-rate of regular DRM-protected music, meaning higher quality tunes. The downside will be larger files and a higher price -- $.30/song more -- but neither of those should be a significant factor for those who want better sounding music and more freedom to manage the music they've paid for.

On iTunes anyway, you'll still have the choice of purchasing the smaller, cheaper, DRM-saddled music whenever it's available in both formats.

That sound you're now hearing, in 256kbps non-protected AAC format, is the noise the DRM Wall makes as it begins to crumble, and Steve Jobs is swinging the biggest sledgehammer of them all.