Stray Hawkeye

As a reminder, it’s Art Fair weekend in Minneapolis, with art fairs in Uptown, Powderhorn, and Loring Park happening all weekend.

I wrote up a review / guide of each two years ago, and from my experience last year, it holds up pretty well.  The one change I’ve heard for this year is that they’ve done away with the Art Hop, which I think is kind of a bummer.  They’re instead replacing it with free passes on the normal city bus routes (details here).  I’m guessing this is going to confuse the bejebus out of most people, and most people won’t think/know to print the passes ahead of time.  Plus, there doesn’t seem to be a straight route from Powderhorn to Loring Park or vice versa without going through Uptown.  So I’m predicting more traffic and more of a pain parking this year.  But aside from that, it should be a nice weekend for it, and it’s always fun to go wander through all the art.

Via Kottke, and Craftzine.

Interesting to see how they’re made.  Makes the laces make a lot more sense, though it does seem to dismiss the idea of pigskins.  Apparently, according to Wikipedia, footballs were never actually made of pigskin, but early on where covered with pig’s bladders, and even further back, were actually just inflated pig bladders, though never actually pig skin.

It is worth noting that he says they make all the NFL game balls there, but not that they make all Wilson footballs there, or even all NFL branded Wilson footballs.  I actually just recently bought a Wilson football, which says “NFL” in gold embossing on the side, which also says “Made in China” in much smaller print on the bottom.

On one hand, it’s easy to get all nationalistic about work being shipped overseas (there’s more than a couple youtube comments rejoicing in the fact that something is still made in the USA).  On the other hand, I know that at least I personally can’t even imagine working the same job, repeating the same 5 second action cycle over and over and over and over… for 40+ years.

And, for that matter, watching it, I can’t help but think, “I bet I could come up with an algorithm to fit more cuts on the same piece of leather, and get more sections out of a single hide”, or, “I bet a machine could make that part way more consistent”.  Which, I’m guessing is why my Wilson football was made in China.

Also, 30 days until Hawkeye Football.

I think we all know that at heart, this is really a recipe / food blog in disguise.  So, today I decided to stop trying to cover it up and just post a plain old recipe.  I got this one from one of my sisters over the 4th of July weekend, and I must say I was impressed.  It’s easy to make, most of the ingredients you may already have, and all of the ingredients keep well in case you want to have them on hand just in case you need to mix this up in a hurry if some friends stop by.

Beergaritas:

Ingredients – Equal parts (12oz):

• 1 can/bottle cheap, semi-tasteless beer (Bud Light, Miller Light, Coors Light, PBR, MGD, etc)
• Lime-aid frozen concentrate (The kind that comes in a frozen cardboard tube with metal ends.  One tube (12oz) is the right size, and you can use the tube to measure the following ingredients.)
• Tequila (yes, 12 oz.)
• Water
• Ice (as needed)

Combine the above in a pitcher.  Mix well.  Drink (preferably with others).

Now you may be saying, “Beer and tequila – that sounds awful!!”  Yes, yes it does sound awful.  But it’s not.  It’s delicious – it doesn’t really taste like beer at all, the beer just gives it a tiny little bit of fizz and body.

Also note that since it’s basically a quarter tequila (if you don’t count the ice), it’s reasonably strong.  However, with all the sugar from the lime-aid, it doesn’t taste like there’s that much alcohol in it, at all.  So, as always, enjoy responsibly.

For a cafeteria to live up to its name, wouldn’t it have to exclusively serve veal?

Since I posted this, I’ve felt the need to post a compare and contrast post between the idea in the original post and the following two videos posted right after each other.  (I know that doesn’t really make sense, but I can’t think of any way to say it better that isn’t pages long.)

Alice Cooper’s I’m Eighteen as covered by Creed:

Tegan and Sara’s Nineteen:

Also, I found that one of the media players on my computer (VLC) lets me play an mp3 of the Nineteen at 67% speed, which is about perfect. Also, I’ve decided my imaginary band’s cover of The Con would really be best as a punk rock version a la Me First and the Gimmie Gimmies.  From the same VLC trick I’ve found that at 150% speed The Con starts to sound like a mix of Japanese pop and death metal – it’s kind of great.  Also, at 150% speed, The Nobodies by Marilyn Manson is hilarious – gets sort a vaudeville, lounge singer, show tune, dance mix feel.

And while we’re at it, I got nothing for 20, but for 21 and 22 – Billy Bragg’s A New England (yeah, the years aren’t in the name, but it’s the opening line, and a great sounding one.)

So for the past two anniversaries of starting my blog, I got my blog makeshift cakes to celebrate.  Well, this year I couldn’t think of anything funny in terms of semi-cake-like food that comes in packs of 3, so I’m going a different route.

I looked up what the traditional anniversary presents are for each year.  It turns out I actually managed to do the first one right, as the traditional one year anniversary present is paper, and the birthday Combo was sitting on a piece of paper.

The second year, I didn’t get so lucky.  As it turns out, the traditional two year anniversary present is cotton, and as far as I know, my dueling Swiss Cake rolls did not have cotton as an ingredient.  (Maybe the candles did in the wicks, but that doesn’t really seem like it counts.)  So, to make up for it, I’m retroactively getting my blog a 100% cotton t-shirt, and half a bag of cotton balls:

Hooray!!

I also have the magnet version of that shirt.  Thanks Laura.

Having corrected last year’s slight, I then looked up what the traditional anniversary gift is for the third year.

Turns out it’s leather.

I have no idea who comes up with these traditions.

Yep, I gathered up a couple things I had laying around the apartment borrowed a variety of items from a large number of my more unusual friends who happened to each have a couple of leather items on hand.

Also, look forward to next year, as the traditional anniversary present for the 4th year is handcuffs.

Nah, just kidding, it’s flowers.

And now ladies and gentlemen, it’s that time of year.  The time where I request any feedback you might have on the blog.  Things you want to see more of?  Things you want to see less of?  Things you love?  Things that make you punch your monitor, not realizing that doing so only destroys you own property and has no greater effect on the internet at large?  Things you’d like to see turned into series?  Potential plot lines for the dino saga?  Other random musings?

The surface of the sun is roughly 9,938 degrees Fahrenheit.  But at least it’s a dry heat.

A little more steam punk-y than I usually go for, but I really like this one. And I rather like the term chap-hop.

Via a friend’s Facebook post.

Been stuck in my head for a couple weeks.

Kind of reminds me of Fear the Boom and Bust.

Being a computer geek, I have a few computers at home.  The one that I use the most, which I built a couple of years ago, was acting up recently.  Not booting up, making funny (but not hard drive crashing style) noises, freezing at random intervals during start up, etc.  This led to me dissecting the whole thing, stripping it down to the most basic pieces, and swapping those out with ones from my other machines and spare parts.  At one point in this process I decided to take a spare hard drive, use my old Windows machine to format it, and then try that one.  So I booted up my Windows machine, spent an hour or two going through all the security patches, virus updates, required Windows updates, etc (have I mentioned lately how much I love Linux?) and hooked up the spare drive to format.  I opened up the old Computer Management window, and started formatting the drive:

Who says Windows isn't friendly?

And was reminded of one of my favorite instances of an unfortunate default column width pared with an ellipse:

The drooling frowny face of formatting

Doesn’t exactly instil confidence that this process is going to end well.

Fair warning – the volume is pretty loud on this one, so start low and work your way up.

Via Make