Bradley Huber’s Site

I’ve been subscribing to RSS feeds like crazy… mainly music blogs and beer blogs for now (and a few New Orleans blogs).  I wish I could find some HCI blogs, but havent really looked too hard yet.

Anyways, a few neat tidbits from my recent RSS subscribing spree:

This one is for Bup. I like Vampire Weekend (dont know if Bup knows the), but we both like Peter Gabriel. How about Peter Gabriel covering their song (with Hot Chip) Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa (which mentions Gabriel)?

And one for Vasu (who may not even read my blog): A sneak preview of Flight of the Conchords Season 2, in the form of the entire 1st episode.

And then one for me, which I found immensely exciting: Sufjan Stevens released 5 XMas EPs as a package in 2006. Every year, starting in 2001 he does a XMas CD and just gives it to friends. 1-5 was a gift to his fans. 6 and 7 are as of yet still only in the hands of the inner circle. However, Vol 8 was leaked!!! More Sufjan Stevens XMas Music!!!!

Candice and I went back to Disney World for our one year anniversary. We stayed at Coronado Springs, and were lucky enough to get the room closest to the lobby and a bus stop, which had also been refurbished with all sorts of new stuff including a 32″ HDTV.  This hotel was much closer to the parks than where we stayed last year and also had less bus stops around the resort, which meant a bus ride that was about 5-10 minutes shorter…. and at midnight after an entire a day walking around a theme park, every minute less you have to stand up in packed bus full of sweaty people and noisy kids is a blessing.

Let’s start by talking about the parks.

Epcot — We love Spaceship Earth. There’s just so much to make fun of. 70’s disco in some random NASA office is hilarious. And the “Build Your Future” feature on the touch screens in your car is hilarious. It uses the picture it takes of you and shows animated versions of yourself living in the future. Loads of fun. We rode it 5 times.

The longest line we waited in all week long was at Soarin’. That is to be expected… However, the wait was only 25 minutes. For some reason, when we got to Soarin, there was no one in line. Immediately after we got in line, about a hundred other people did too. When we left Soarin, the wait was over 70 minutes. What amazing timing, as I’m sure that was the only time, ever, that Soarin has had a 25 minute wait 2 hours after the park opened.

We caught an amusing street show in the UK before I went into a pub for a Black & Tan. We saw a French guy stacking chairs about 20 feet high, and climbing on top of them. We saw a Canadian band playing Celtic Music (wait…what??). We continued to avoid the boring “History of whatever country” movies for the second year in a row. We finally did mission:space (the tame version).  We skipped Figment, because the new version is incredibly lame. We played a lot of games that taught us about Fire Safety and Recycling in Innoventions. Test Track, Illuminations, blah blah blah… Oh, and I RODE A SEGWAY.

Magic Kingdom– I let Candice ride Winnie the Pooh twice. And visit Mickey and Minnie’s houses. And we rode Small World again and didnt get stuck this time. Laugh Floor is still hilarious, Buzz Lightyear is still fun, Jungle Cruise is still corny, and Pirates of the Carribbean is still piratey, the Transit Authority is still…well…the Transit Authority, and Carousel of Progress is still Carouselling around Progress (though the jump from 1930 to 1980’s version of 2000is weird). Splash Mountain still splashes, Thunder Mountain still thunders, and Space Mountain still spaces (wait…what?).  Tommorowland is still my favorite area, though I did gain a new appreciation for Frontier Land and Adventureland.

MGM (oops, I mean “Hollywood Studios”) — The first morning there, waiting in the room for Tower of Terror, the Year of a Million Dreams team showed up.  And we all got Dream Fastpasses. A Fast Pass to every ride in the park, good for that day. Awesome! We used it for Rockin Rollercoaster (saved 5 whole minutes), couldnt use it for Indiana Jones or Lights Motor Action Stunt Show (they stopped using Fast Passes), and didnt need it for one other ride, as there was no line.

However, it was worth it for one ride alone: Toy Story’s Midway Arcade. A new ride- a moving shoot’em’up like Buzz Lightyear, but with 3d glasses. So you can actually see the trajectory of your dart or baseball or hoops, and adjust your gun accordingly. It was incredibly fun. The wait never dipped below 60 minutes, and Fast Passes for it ran out before 10am. In other words, if we didnt have the Dream Fast Pass (which got us in there in 10 minutes), we’d have been waiting for an hour, at least, to ride it.

DisneyQuest - still awesome. Lots of arcade games and virtual reality games that are fun.

Animal Kingdom - Skipped it! Take that Animal Kingdom!

And now for the food:

Our first dinner was Les Chefs de France for dinner. We tried escargot for the first time (not too bad- mostly parsley, butter and garlic though), and I had awesome Onion Soup (it’s hard too make a French Onion soup I dont like, but some places have found a way- either being too watery, or somehow making the onions hard and sour).  My entree was kind of a lame version of beans and rice, but candice had an awesome steak.

Brown Derby had good steak too, and pretty good app+dessert. Norway has a good lamb shank. I didnt like Japan’s sushi or tempura… We ate at a Winnie the Pooh buffet. Hoop-de-doo Review was loads of fun, as always.

We ate so much food. It felt like we never stopped eating.

Anyways, it was loads of fun, and we took it at a much more leisurely pace, so we didnt get as worn out as we did last year. Having spare time to go back to the room in the middle of the day was nice. I want to keep going back. Our driver to and from the airport told us he owns vacation rentals, and has a 6 bedroom 4 bath house with jacuzzi and pool for $1400/week. Thats only like $233 a couple if you find 1 couple for each room. And Disney would be awesomewith a group… any takers?

For the first time in 7 years I am in the same spot as I was last year…

Now: My House
1 year ago: My House
2 years ago: Apartment in River Ridge, LA
3 years ago: Apartment in El Dorado, AR
4 years ago: Apartment in Troy, NY
5 years ago: Dorm in Troy, NY
6 years ago: Backup Dorm at LaTech while my normal dorm was being cleaned from the fire
7 years ago: Honors Dorm at LaTech <— whoo, stability!
8 years ago: Honors Dorm at LaTech
9 years ago: Dorm At LaTech
10 years ago: with parents in Mandeville

Stability is awesome… I forgot what it was like.

I was bored and was Googling people I went to elementary school with… One such search was of a step-brother/step-sister pair. Searching for each individually brought up way too many results, but Googling for both brought up only one page: a “Where are they Now” page for their tiny high school’s graduating class of 1998. Instead of going to one of the major high schools in the area, they went to a tiny high school that allowed students from our tiny elementary/middle school to skip 8th grade, which is why they were class of ‘98 and not ‘99 like me.

Anyways, the girl didnt have any info under her name. But the boy’s info has pretty much cast a weird shadow over my day. He apparently died in 2005 while rock climbing in Colorado just one semester shy of an Aeronautical Engineering degree.

I was not expecting to find that when I first sat down to Google.

http://amazingwow.org/miracles-of-modern-science/ep/

Miracles of Modern Science is a band that uses classical instruments (violin, cello, etc)… I really like their sound, kind of a string quartet version of Andrew Bird meets Arcade Fire meets some undetermined third band I can’t place my finger on…

But the 4 song EP is free. So why not download it and give them 15 minutes of your time.  I wish they had a full album out, because it would probably be very good.

Anyways, this is just my gut reaction. I’ve only listened to it 3 times so far, but it hasnt grown old on me yet.

I was one wobbly pin away from a 300 - a perfect game.  I got the first 6 strikes, but in the 7th frame I left one pin. It was wobbling. It had a chance to fall over, but decided not to. I then got 5 more strikes in a row, each one mocking me with increasing ferocity about the one I missed in the 7th frame.  11 strikes in one game. I have never done that before. Thanks to the 9 in the 7th frame, that left me with *only* a 267 - which is still my best game ever.

I also bowled a 660 series. My best series ever. So I broke both records in one night. I was looking back through previous entries to verify that a 660 was indeed my highest, and saw that I just broke 600 for the first time about a year and a half ago. And only hit 600 for the second time a year ago.  Now, I’ve hit 600 maybe a dozen times.

Looking over previous posts, there was a time where I was amazed that I was maintaining a 173 average… Just last season I kept a 183 for 13 weeks.  And this season, after 7 weeks, I’m at a 192.  I 192 average after 7 weeks??? I find it incredibly weird that I am actually doing this good, and it isnt just some fluke- I am maintaining it.

Just two years ago I was at a 163 average, and now I’m beating it by 30 pins.  At this rate I will be bowling only 300 games before I’m 35.

Logic.

One side has shown an ability to clearly and rationally discuss the issues, and the other side has shown a complete inability to move past smears and name-calling.  No, Obama is not my Messiah. No, I do not think he is perfect. No, I do not think he is going to enact every single thing he has talked about in his campaign. No, by defending Obama against smears like “muslim”, and “he isnt even a citizen”, I am NOT drinking the kool-aid and walking the party line. I am being LOGICAL.

The bevy of insults thrown towards Obama these last few weeks has been insane. I mean, literally insane- how can people who I have previously thought to be intelligent human beings honestly be repeating these incredibly ridiculous lies? It can only be insanity. I dont mean “Oh, I disagree with Obama’s tax plan, so I am voting for McCain,” or “I feel like McCain would be better on national defense.” Whatever, that’s fine.  That’s you applying your personal beliefs rationally to the candidate’s positions. I am 100% for that.  I would rather support someone voting McCain for that reason than someone voting for Obama purely because of race. But this isnt a racial thing for me. It’s a logical thing. When you have people claiming Obama is a Marxist or socialist who dont even know what the word means, it has stopped being about logically applying beliefs to the issues and has once again become about succumbing to Republican fear.

I’m tired of fear. America is tired of fear. But being tired of fear doesnt mean we are weak or unpatriotic. In fact, that is just one more example of the illogical nature of the far right. That somehow being against removing civil liberties and illegally invading countries makes us unpatriotic. That if youre not with them 100%, youre against America.  I’m ready for a President that will once again restore the ability for all Americans to voice their opinions without their government deeming them to be unpatriotic. I’ve read a LOT of crazy things about Obama recently.  But I have been able to shrug them off as crazy right wing lunatics because barring some sketchy voter fraud, Obama will win. And these guys will whine and whine, and claim this is finally the end of the United States of America, blah blah blah… Like I said - insane.

But the thing that sparked this rant on logic was a post I saw from some crazy far-rightwing guy who claims McCain will win. His proof? A link to 2004 polling results from the day before the election that show Kerry being predicted to win 298 - 231. Apparently the fact that some people predicted Kerry to win the EV in 2004 means that since Obama is predicted to win the EV in 2008, he will lose. But from his VERY SAME LINK, the national poll displayed Kerry: 49.4%, W: 49.1%

Notice something a little different there between 2004 and 2008?  Yes, it’s true that in both cases the Democrat is predicted to win… BUT if you spotted the part where Kerry was only polling .3% ahead, compared to Obama is 6% ahead, you are smarter than pretty much anyone who watches Fox News, reads Drudge Report, etc.

Plus, this isnt a national election- it’s 50 state elections. Go here: http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2004/nov/nov01.html  Look at the state polls for Florida and Ohio.  Yes, Electoral-Vote.com is predicting them to go Kerry, but shows it is VERY VERY close, as in <5% in the polls and still within the margin of error. Eventually, these 2 states went W, and he won.

If you spotted yet another difference between 2004 and 2008, you are MUCH smarter than all those guys I listed before. Kerry didnt break 270 EVs with the states where he was outside the margin of error.  Obama, however, has.  By a lot. This means, logically, Obama is statistically guaranteed to win, barring some incredibly bad poll data across DOZENS of polls (incredibly unlikely), or voter fraud (slightly more likely). Yet the far right apparently subscribes to the Huckabee-Math.

So really, it comes down to logic. Which candidate do I support? The one who has shown the ability to reason? Or the one whose supporters think that just because a poll was wrong (yet within the margin of error) in 2004, that means ALL polls will be wrong in 2008, despite an incredibly different set of circumstances?  As someone who tries to be very logical about everything, *this* was what has pissed me off the most about the far right.  Everything else I have just been able to shrug off as the far right being brainwashed by ideology. But a failure to understand cold, hard numbers? Facts staring them RIGHT IN THE FACE? It’s just ridiculous. There is a complete disconnect from reality. It’s like they’re staring at an apple and calling it a purple cat with five tails. I think the far right has officially crossed the line from “brainwashed by ideology” into “insane”. Granted, it was a thin line to begin with. But they’re there.

Fringe is the newest JJ Abrams show.  I’m still unsure how to feel about it. It feels like it wants to be the X-Files, except more quirky, more hip, and tied to a more plausible conspiracy plot line.  But I dont know if it works. Dr. Bishop seems to be quirky for the sake of being quirky. “I had to tell you something important… I want the strawberry pancakes!”  Wow, how quirky! I mean, I know he was in a mental institute for 17 years, but I dont know how many “delightfully quirky” character flaws I can take before it becomes too much. He just switches from zany and wacky to serious mad scientist too often and too fast to be believable. Maybe if they set his character up to where each episode we caught glimpses that maybe he isnt the whackjob he shows himself to be, and the innocent genius who suffered an unfortunate lab accident, and instead showed that maybe it’s all a cold, calculated act to allow him to continue his dangerous and unethical experiments, *THEN* maybe he would be an engaging characgter.

But I doubt theyre going to take that road with him. Instead, theyre going to place all the crazy twists and turns with the mysterious “pattern” and the myterious corporation who always seems to be connected.

Unfortunate. Perhaps the main thing I dont like about the show, which will cause me to stop watching, are the two main characters. The other guy from Dawson’s Creek just sits there and makes wise cracks *yawn* and Agent Dunham always look either confused, or concerned, or both.

Fringe wants to be a better XFiles so badly, but their main characters dont have the connection of a Mulder and Scully, or the compelling conspiracy of a mysterious cigarette smoking man and shadow government. And who lets an FBI rookie on to a team investigating a high level conspiracy??

Anyways, I’ll watch it for now, but it’s perilously close to losing me.

PLUS

We evacuated to Tuscaloosa, AL. The drive took TWENTY HOURS. It’s normally 4.  We left at 4am, and by 4:15am Indy had thrown up twice in the car. Luckily, he was fine the rest of the way. He really wanted to sleep in my lap pretty much the whole time… not really a good idea with a 45lb dog.

My mom’s cousin is a Jefferson parish sherriff. So even though no one can get back into town, she was able to call him to check on our house while he was patrolling.  He walked around and said everything looked fine, except one side of fence was blown down.

That’s no big deal, because it was the old fence, not the new fence we *just* put up 3 weeks ago. And I’m happy we got lucky with our windows since we didnt board any of them up.

Now we just have to worry about getting back to Kenner. We may leave on Friday, even if New Orleans is opened up Wednesday or Thursday. Mainly because thats when our hotel reservation ends, and I dont want to sit in traffic for 20 hours again.