Shaving a few years?


For many years the ritual was the same, in the winter, I grew a beard, in the summer off it came. That was until LatteGirl asked me several years ago, to not shave everything off. Instead I kept the goatee, and stuck with that year round. Until this year. This year I decided to bring back the full beard.

What I forgot however on this particular Pre-Easter Saturday, was just how cold my face would feel when I stepped outside.  I’m sure when summertime comes, I will be happy I did this, but while it is still cold, I am so far regretting it.

Before

Before

After
After

Happy Springtime

easter_big.gif

Happy Easter to those that celebrate such things, and to for everybody else (well in the northern hemisphere) welcome to Spring (welcome to Autumn for those “Down Under”)

Why do children have to die for common sense laws?

Abigail Taylor died Thursday from injuries sustained last June when when she sat on a wading pool drain; the suction so strong that it suck out part of her intestines. It is always a tragedy when a child dies, and always there is some knee-jerk reactions, some good and sometimes even some not so go. But when it happens for something incredibly stupid, it is all that much more infuriating.

On the heels of this incident, in December Congress approved legislation to “ban the manufacture, sale or distribution of drain covers that don’t meet anti-entrapment safety standards.” It was called the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act [pdf], the named for the granddaughter of former Secretary of State James A. Baker, III, who was killed when she was trapped by the suction of a drain in 2002!

Now, I don’t understand why this wasn’t already a law, because it seems so brain-dead obvious to me as a parent, but can somebody explain to me, even after the first incident, and when people started lobbying for this law in 2002, it took 5 freakin’ years to get this written into law?  Now, I am willing to bet if I left it at that, I would have somebody come along and say “there’s a war on and Congress had ‘more important’ things to contend with.”  But if that is the case, then can somebody explain to me why Abigail Taylor had to die when over those same five years Congress sat back,  played IM games with Pages, stuffed freezers full of cash, taking bribes, and making medical diagnosis via videotape.  They had “the time” to do it, but it seems unless there is enough dead children for them to stop taking donations from corporations that are too cheap to manufacture these things safely, they just allow it to go on.

Friday Focaccia

Who the heck is still voting for McCain? – apparently McCain is so senile, he needs Joe Lieberman constantly behind him correcting him. First he made it clear that qualifications (as he sees it) to be a “War President” and picking up the torch from Bush does not mean he needs to know the difference between Sunni and Shiite. And now he is showing off his International Relations skills by going into Israel and during a speech calling Purim, “their Halloween.” Now, to be honest I do not know squat about Purim, but I am not in Israel as a representative of the United States and making reference to it. Maybe before he opens his mouth next time, Lieberman could teach him how to use The Google Video, and get some information out of the series of tubes.

Glib Gibson – Gibson Guitars started out suing Activision for Guitar Hero claiming a patent infringement issue. Now they are apparently trying to get their way by suing retailers for selling the game! What next, will they sue you for buying the game?

Just another reason I hate Apple – Be careful the next time you update your iTunes software, apparently Apple is trying to broaden their market for their inferior Safari browser by making it part of an iTunes update. Remember when Microsoft tried to include IE7 as part of a Windows Update? Yeah, well the same outrage should be applied here. At least with IE it could be argued that by trying to move people from IE6 to IE7 Microsoft was just trying to rectify security issues (since IE6 is used throughout the OS whether it is your “browser” or not), but there is no valid reason to include Safari with iTunes. But this is Apple we are talking about, who would dare question the “Great And Powerful Jobs?”

Just another reason I love Starbucks – Things need to be changed… not so much new, but changed back to the way they were before, when Starbucks was mostly about coffee. Well it seems that Starbucks got the message, and is promising a number of changes to get back to their coffee basics. There is only one thing that would make me happier about this announcement. They did mention that there would be new espresso machines “designed to give a more consistent …” beverage. But to me, that only means another version of those automated espresso machines they installed. I would love to see them go back to grinding the beans and pouring shots from a real espresso machine. But I guess you can’t have everything.

Just wait until Bill O’Reilly gets a hold of this – I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw this Jeff Parker cartoon, about the overcommercialization of Easter. Of course I probably didn’t laugh for the reasons it was intended. Here we have a holiday, where the symbols of the holiday in no way resemble the reason for the holiday. For this reason, either for a joke or not really understanding you always have people ask the question of what does the bunny and eggs have to do with Easter? Of course we know this is because the Christians stole the symbols of the Spring Holiday from the Pagans in order to “sell” their religion to try and convert people. Now you complain about its commercialization? I really just don’t want to see or hear about a “War On Easter” I really really don’t.

How you know your old #377

I was watching Wizards of Waverly Place with LatteGirl, when I noticed the father looked familiar… seeing the credits I noted it was David DeLuise.

I suddenly shuddered… Could this really be?  Am I that old?  Was I looking at the kid that I used to watch on 21 Jump Street now a middle age father on a Disney Channel Show?   How could it be any worse I thought.

Firing up IMDB, I discovered I was wrong.  I had mistaken David for his brother Peter DeLuise.  And then I found out how it could be worse… David is the younger brother of that kid I watched on 21 Jump Street.  Someday I am going to learn to stop asking that “can it get any worse” question.  Because the answer is always yes.   To put the cherry on top of this one… Peter is about a year younger than I am.