I know you’ve been waiting patiently, and now that wait will pay off. I just posted Episode #7 of the Minnesota Geek Animal Stories Podcast. This is episode is titled “Emmet and Frank”, and is about our loveable Labrador Emmet. You can find it here. I also wanted to tell you that starting with Episode #7, I’ve been using a new microphone and the audio should be at a MUCH higher level than previous epidosdes. Enjoy!

–Pete

OK. The three of you that read my blog may have noticed that I seem to have broken the rest of my website in the last couple of days. Yup. Me. I broke it. I even know how to fix it. I just haven’t gotten around to it. It’ll be fixed soon. In the meantime, enjoy the rest of the site. The blog and gallery will still work. Sorry. You’ll get over it. Really. Trust me.

–Pete

I’ve long been a fan of Steve Irwin, the so-called “Crocodile Hunter”. I’ve watched his shows on Discovery Channel and Animal Planet for years and I’ve used parts of shows in my classroom when I was a teacher. He was a gifted speaker and his enthusium for all animals was contagious. My heart aches for his wife Terri and his two children. He was taken far too young.

His producer and closest friend, John Stainton said in a statement today, “The world has lost a great wildlife icon, a passionate conservationist and one of the proudest dads on the planet. He died doing what he loves best and left this world in a happy and peaceful state of mind. Steve would have said, ‘Crocs Rule!’”

For more information or to learn more about Steve and Terri and their zoo, click here.

–Pete

I’ve been pushing pretty hard at work the last few weeks and haven’t taken much time to just wind down and relax. Today was the day. The thing I had planned to do fell through. So — I walked the dogs with my wife this morning, took a shower, had some lunch, and read my book. About mid-afternoon I took a short nap. It was all very relaxing and restful. What am I doing tonight? Not much….. I’m just enjoying a rainy, late summer evening, relaxing indoors. Gotta love it!

–Pete

Phil Collins has always been a favorite of mine. Here’s a classic one called We Said Hello, Goodbye

Well it really don’t matter much where you are
Cause home is in your heart
It’s a feeling that you wake with one day
Some people keep running all their life
And still find they haven’t gone too far
They don’t see it’s the feeling inside – the feeling inside

–Pete

“Weird Al” Yankovic just released a new album. I’ve always been a fan of Al. The lyrics from this song give a good example why. The title of the song is Don’t Download This Song. Here’s a snippet of the lyrics:

But deep in your heart
You know the guilt would drive you mad
And the shame would leave a permanent scar
Cause you start out stealing songs
Then you’re robbing liquor stores
And selling crack
And running over school kids with your car

I also like this line:

You don’t want to mess with the RIAA
They’ll sue you if you burn that CDR
It doesn’t matter if you’re a grandma
Or a seven year old girl
They’ll treat you like the evil hardbitten criminal scum you are

Don’t get me wrong here. I’m a HUGE supportor of LEGALLY downloaded music. I personally buy mine from the iTunes Music Store. I find iTMS so convenient that I can’t remember the last time I even purchased a physical audio CD. What amuses me about this song is that Weird Al has chosen to let you download it for free. Rather ironic, huh? You can get it here.

I spent the day yesterday doing something I really don’t like to do — sealing the driveway. My house is more than 10 years old now and the driveway is blacktop. Every three to four years I try to seal the driveway with that icky, thick, black driveway sealer. This was the year. It took me four hours to do it yesterday and despite wearing gloves and old shoes, I still managed to get that stuff all over me. UGH! At least, for my effort, I got several compliments from the neighbors about how nice it looked. With a little luck, I’ll maybe even get a few more years out of this driveway before it needs to be replaced.

–Pete

Mark Schultz is a gifted song writer. I love the way so many of his songs tell a story. This particular song is one of my favorites from him. It is about the relationship between a mother and son. I imagine I like it so much because I have such a great relationship with my mom. Here are the lyrics from the second half of the song — which are just heart wrenching. It is the part where his mom is dying.

Well, I don’t think
She can hear you now,
The doctor told me
Your mother is fading,
It’s best that you leave

When you come home,
No matter how far,
Run through the door
And into my arms;
It’s where you are loved,
It’s where you belong,
And I will be here
When you come home,
When you come home.

Incidentally — Mark’s mom is just fine. This song, like so many of his, are not necessarily autobiographical. In his

–Pete

Please pardon my site if it looks weird for the next few days. I’m messing around with a new template for WordPress and I’ll likely upgrade to a new version of WordPress as well. I’ll let you know when I’m done.

–Pete

My twin brother Matt wrote a nice entry in his blog about a trip that we took with an A-26 Invader that belonged to the Planes of Fame East Air Museum in Eden Prairie. Actually, hist post is not so much about the trip we took, but about the preparation for the trip.

We both used to be volunteers at POFE when it was a viable museum. We shared the job of crew chief of the museum’s A-26, which meant that we were in charge of handling the day-to-day upkeep of the airplane. In museum terms, that meant that we mostly kept it clean. We also got the privilige of helping with the maintenance of it, which was especially fun during annual inspection time. During the rest of the year, we keep the grease fittings filled with grease and we tried to pull the propellors through at least nine blades per engine, per week. By pulling the propellors through, we were literally turning the engine by hand. The point of this is to try keep the oil from pooling in the bottom cylinders of the engine and to try and keep the rest of the seals in the engine from drying out.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll try to finish the story he started and talk about the fantastic trip itself. The destination of that trip was none other than the fabulous EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, WI.

–Pete

Scott Krippayne is a Contemporary Christian artist that I had a chance to see live a while back. One of the songs that struck me as pretty cool was a song called “Renee” that he sang. If I hadn’t heard his explanation about it at the concert, I wouldn’t have gotten it. He explained that he was sitting in a coffee shop trying to do some song writing when in came Renee Zellweger to order some coffee. As Scott watched her order her coffee, he literally wondered, “What’s it like to be you?” His wondering turned into this really interesting song. Here’s a snippet:

What’s it like to be you?
Is it really as perfect
As we’d like to conclude?

Or do you lie awake at night
Contemplating life
Trying to remember some line of a song
Do you stare off into space
Dreaming of a place
Where you can just erase what went wrong?

Did I hook you? You’ll probaly want to go here to buy it then.

–Pete

John Mayer has written some really interesting music and some really interesting lyrics. This song’s lyrics struck me particularly, since they reminded me so much of my Freshamn and Sophomore years in high school. As you may have guessed, I was one of those awkward, nerdy kids who had a hard time figuring out what to say/do in front of girls. As a result, I spent many a lonely Friday night feeling sorry for myself while sitting at home, or hanging with my other guy friends, who were just as nerdy and awkward as I was. This song, if it would have been out back then, would have been our anthem.

Staying home alone on a Friday
Flat on the floor looking back
On old love
Or lack thereof
After all the crushes are faded
And all my wishful thinking was wrong
I’m jaded
I hate it

I’m tired of being alone
So hurry up and get here
So tired of being alone
So hurry up and get here
Get here

See what I mean? Download a legal copy of the song right here.

–Pete

I love music. I also love song lyrics if they are especially clever or well written. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, because I love good lyrics, I tend to gravitate towards artists like Ben Folds, Barenaked Ladies, Mark Schultz, etc. I thought I’d try something new for the blog starting this week and that is a “Lyric of the Week” or “LotW” for short. Each week, I’ll take a piece of a song lyrics, tell you what song it is from, and tell you why I like it.

Let’s start with one as part of this post. For this week, we’ll take a look at some of the lyrics from the song “Testing 1 2 3” by the Barenaked Ladies. Here’s the part I like the most:

She got a new apartment
It’s out on the escarpment
And in her glove compartment
Are my songs

She hasn’t even heard them
Since she found out what the words meant
She decided she preferred them
All wrong

Why do I like this part of the lyrics? Two reasons. The first is I like the word escarpment. I am interested in geology and escarpment is a geological term. According to http://www.geographic.org, it means “A long cliff or steep slope separating two comparatively level or more gently sloping surfaces and resulting from erosion or faulting.” I love the fact that they managed to work that word into a song, and use it in a way that is technically correct.

I also like the second part talking about song lyrics. How many times have you heard a song on the radio and thought you knew the words — only to find out later that you were completely wrong? I’ve had that happen many times. I think it is interesting that this paradox ended up being sung about in a song. Cool.

Want to have a listen to this song? Follow this link to the iTunes Music Store to download your legal copy of the song.

–Pete

I recently ran across an application for Mac OS X that is simply called Fish. The idea behind it is very simple. It simulates an aquarium on your Mac in 3D. That in itself isn’t terribly new or exciting, but there are several twists to this app that make it different from other Aquarium type apps you’ve seen before.

First off, you can change the view. There are several different points of view that the virtual “camera” can be pointed to change what is presented. For example, you can focus the camera on a particular fish in your aquarium and it will follow it around.

Secondly, these fish need to be fed from time to time or they will die. You can set up your aquarium to “Auto Feed” if you like, or you can feed them by hand by clicking on the little fish food icon.

Lastly, and this is the really interesting part, is that the application is Bonojour/Rendezvous aware. What that means is that if there is another user on your network subnet that is also running Fish, the fish from their aquarium can swim into yours and vice versa. Pretty cool, huh?

Fish is freeware and can be downloaded by following this link. It runs on both 10.3 and 10.4 and it is even a Universal Binary.

–Pete

A couple of weeks ago, I went camping with my friends Steve and Brian from my days at the Hopkins Public Schools. This was a “guys only” trip — a chance for us to get away and spend some time doing guy things. We camped at the Burlington Bay Campground in Two Harbors, MN. This isn’t wilderness camping by any stretch — but we did tent camp it at least.

While we there we try to cram as much North Shore stuff in as we could. We visited the Two Harbors Lighthouse, Split Rock Lighthouse, the Palisade Head, Gooseberry Falls State Park, and the Canal Park Marine Museum. How’s that for a busy weekend. We also managed to get in some time around the camp fire to talk smart, drink (root) beer, and make smores. It was a good time all the way around. If you are interested in seeing the photos, click here.

Thanks for a memorable trip guys!

–Pete

Have you ever heard of Canine Cognitive Dysfunction Syndrome? I hadn’t either until recently. Think of it as Alzheimer’s for dogs. Why am I bringing it up? Our vet believes our beloved Belle is suffering from this disease. Just like with humans, it degrades the ability of the dog to think and process information. She is literally, losing her mind.

This has been going on for a couple of months now. We noticed something was up when Belle began having trouble sleeping through the night. She’d wake us up in the middle of the night with whining and crying. We initially assumed she just couldn’t make it through the night any more before she had to go outside. We’d take her outside, but it was particularly urgent for her to get there. Next we thought it was hunger. We began giving her a “bedtime” snack. That didn’t help either. After weeks of this, we took her to our vet and talked with him about it. He started doing exams and could find nothing physically wrong with her. Nothing explained it — which is what led us to CDS. It is a diagnosis of exclusion. One of the things that changes in dogs that have CDS is sleep patterns. That certainly describes Belle.

There is a treatment for CDS. It is a medication called Anipryl, which helps with the symptoms. So far, it has made some difference for Belle. We’re also giving her Xanax, an anti-anxiety medication since she gets very agitated at night now too. Between the two, we’re all getting some relief. We’ll see how long it lasts, as our vet tells us this will be temporary — a few weeks to a few months.

Keep Belle….and us…in your prayers.

It has been too long, but Episode 6 of the Minnesota Geek Animal Stories Podcast is now posted and ready for consumption. I’ve also got Episodes 7 and 8 ready now too and I’ll post them later in the week. Enjoy!

–Pete

I’m sitting in my sweltering kitchen waiting for the repair technician to finish repairing the central air conditioner for the house. Last Tuesday, my wife and I turned it on for the first time this year only to discover that it didn’t work!

I called our energy company the next day (Wed), and asked them to come out and fix it. We have a service contract with them for repairing our major appliances (furnace, water heater, etc) and I was thinking we had added the air conditioner to that contract when moved here. It turns out, I forget to make that call and they told me that I didn’t have a contract for it. Figures! They could still do the repair, but they would bill me for time and materials for the repair. I added the air conditioner to our contract so we wouldn’t run into this again and scheduled the repair.

On Friday morning, a repair technician showed up to do the repair. After 45 minutes of diagnosis and repair, he thought he had the problem all taken care of by replacing the capicitor that is used to start the fan motor and the compressor motor. He fired it up and the unit began to run. It ran perfectly….for about a minute….and then the fan motor stopped again. UGH! Now it needed a new fan motor too.

After a half hour on the phone, it turned out that there wasn’t a fan motor that was an exact fit for this unit anywhere within the five state region, so he said he thought he could make it work with a slightly bigger motor — one that they actually had in stock. Good! He called for the delivery of the part and said as soon as it gets there, give them a call and they’d get someone out to get it repaired. The part was delivered to my house about four hours later and I called to schedule the install. The best they could do was to have someone here on Sunday, and they could only narrow it down to sometime between 8AM and 4PM. UGH!! Even worse — it was 93 degrees on Saturday and it was forcast to be even hotter on Sunday.

I’ve spent the day sweltering in my house waiting for the air conditioner guy to show up. He’s finally here and it is (hopefully) almost done. The motor is in and he’s wiring it up now. Keep your fingers crossed.

–Pete

Back in the late 90s, I was introduced to the joy of network gaming on a Mac with a really cool little tank war game called Bolo. The basic idea behind Bolo was that you had an island, and whoever could conquer all the bases and all the gun emplacements (called pill boxes) on the island with their tank first, won the game. You could play against the computer or play against multiple people across your LAN.

The other night I was thinking about that game and wondering if it still existed. Much to my surprise it did. It was ported over to Mac OS X twice. The company that did the first port seems to have disappeared before they ever released the final version of the game. Thankfully, someone else took up the charge and it was ported a second time with a new name: nuBolo. The game play looks identical to the original version. What I’m waiting for now is an opportunity to play it again with an a former co-worker of mine who always kicked my butt when we battled each other.

Check out nuBolo here: http://www.nubolo.net/

–Pete