New Addition
By Dave Klecha | June 27, 2009
So, I mentioned it in Twitter and on Facebook, but neglected to say anything here. But as you can tell by above, we’ve added on to the family: second girl, third kid overall in just a bit over four years.
Yeah, we’re just that crazy.
Her name is Alexa Marie and she was born June 16th. She’s adorable and healthy and lovely.
Topics: life | 3 Comments »
Help Me Find This Recording
By Dave Klecha | May 24, 2009
Way back when sometime, Soul Asylum of “Runaway Train” fame recorded a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on the (a) Wire.” Since then, I’ve been on the verge of believing I hallucinated it, since I can’t find it anywhere. No iTunes, no eMusic, not even in the list of covers acknowledged by the Wikipedia article about the song. I remember hearing it on CIMX 88.7 in Windsor, ON back in the early 90s, but nothing since then.
I’m still pretty sure I didn’t hallucinate it. But does anyone have any idea where one could find it?
For reference, here’s Adam Cohen singing it live:
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Canceled!
By Dave Klecha | May 23, 2009
So, I’m really kind of bummed. This last year, there were only three actual television shows that I watched with any regularity, and two of them have been canceled: The Unit, the unfortunately named show about a team in the US Army’s Delta Force and their struggles in fighting unconventional war at home and abroad, and Life, a show about a cop wrongly imprisoned for murder for twelve years, only to be exonerated, get his job back, $50 million for his troubles, and new sense of zen. The Unit got axed after four years, Life after only one-and-a-half (really, given the writer’s strike).
I think Life suffered from what I call the Band of Brothers curse (which is related to the Firefly curse, and for which the short-lived show Standoff is my combo thesis, but I digress). In that, I don’t think any show starring anyone from Band of Brothers has survived for any meaningful duration. ER is the only notable exception, clinging to life with Scott Grimes in the title sequence for five whole seasons. But I think that’s both the exception that proves the rule, and a demonstration of how ER’s momentum and popularity was enough to power it through any albatross… for a time.
So, I wasn’t surprised that Life didn’t last, especially given a few guest appearances from Michael Cudlitz who could well ride yet another series into the ground, assuming Southland conforms to the curse. But I am pretty disappointed. It was a consistently entertaining and interesting show that jammed on the random weird button just enough for me.
Oh well, at least I still have Burn Notice, which is actually coming back with new episodes in a couple weeks. I found myself wishing last night that both Life and The Unit had been quirky summer cable series, like Burn Notice, just because those seem to have little trouble surviving many multiple seasons. And Stargate: Universe will be starting up in the fall, which I’ll give at least a few episodes, just because I like Lou Diamond Phillips.
So what else is out there to watch? No thanks on Heroes, they lost me after the first season. And I’m honestly waiting on LOST until they’re all out on DVD. No idea if that’ll make a difference or not, but it’s how I’ve decided to go at it. I should probably watch Psych more, because it’s just my kind of show (and Dule Hill is just awesome).
Topics: life | 1 Comment »
Sciencey Stuff
By Dave Klecha | May 8, 2009
Related stuff:
First, is that Roger Ebert criticizes the new Star Trek movie, in part, for its poor and imprecise grasp of science… and uses imprecise language to do so. Such as: “Consider, at light warp speeds, how imprecise it would be to say “At my command … 3 … 2 … 1 …” Between “2” and “1,” you could jump a million galaxies.”
A million galaxies, Rog? Light Warp speeds? Thanks for clearing up their terrible grasp of science.
If I were inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, I’d suggest he was doing so deliberately as a sort of shot at the imprecise science; but if so, it was poorly executed, and thus no better than honestly sloppy science.
And speaking of boldly going where no man has gone before, etc. There’s this bit about ongoing mysteries from New Scientist; not so much anything to say about the article itself, which seems to be a recently updated retread from circa 2005, but just the notion that there are still all these fundamental mysteries out there that could radically change our perception of the universe (and, in Star Trek tie-in, our ability to manipulate it). I’m just bummed that I feel like I need an advanced degree in science to grok most of those questions.
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For Some Reason
By Dave Klecha | May 4, 2009
The vast majority of my WordPress comment spam comes in to this post about Howard Tayler. Don’t know why–maybe because of his overwhelming popularity on the internets.
In other blog housekeeping news, I’m going to add a Twitter plugin for the sidebar. And I upgraded to 2.7.1 on Wordpress without a hitch. I’m digging the new back-end lay out, an improvement over 2.5, which itself was a vast improvement over prior versions.
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Pizza Of The Future
By Dave Klecha | April 30, 2009
As an old pizza guy (managed a Hungry Howie’s for a time when I was in college), I think this is damn nifty:
Green and convenient!
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Next Verse, Same as the First
By Dave Klecha | April 29, 2009
Okay, I’m going to try it again: going to bed early and getting up early. Get stuff done in the morning, get the kids up and ready at my leisure.
The last time it failed for me, it failed because my daughter would wake up and start crying as soon as she heard me moving around. Got to the point I despaired of getting anything done in the morning because she was always awake and demanding attention. Well, now she’s a little older and a little more cool with just chilling out in bed in the morning, even if she hears me moving around.
This time, it will probably fail when #3 comes along in a month or two and disrupts the ever-lovin’ heck out of our schedules. But maybe I’ll try it again when things settle down again in the fall (ish).
The trouble with this whole thing is that I’m really a night person at heart. Given my choice, I’ll stay up until 6am and sleep all morning. Sadly, I don’t have a job that’s really cool with that kind of schedule. And too often I give in to my choice and stay up waaaaaay later than I should. (Which is the other thing that has killed such efforts in the past.)
So anyway, that’s the plan for now. Sorry if I’m not up to chat with you until 3am. I’ll probably crumble and go that way again some day, but for now I’m going to try for productivity in the early morning. Wish me luck.
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I Can’t Go To Bed…
By Dave Klecha | April 28, 2009
My son’s favorite new game is to tell us what he can’t do.
“I can’t eat spaghetti,” he says, when we tell him it’s time for dinner.
Usually followed up with, “I want to eat spaghetti!”
Kind of maddening, but it’s also easily defeated by just telling him to go ahead and do whatever it is he says he wants to do; and happily, he only uses this particular tactic with stuff that we want him to do in the first place. Sometimes he’ll go ahead and do it, sometimes he won’t.
Right now, after having been sent to bed once already, he’s eating a peanut butter sandwich in his pyjamas.
Silly childrens.
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Robo-Called
By Dave Klecha | April 28, 2009
By a collection agency.
For someone else.
The robo-caller called herself “Chelsea.”
In a total robot voice.
OMGWTFSkynet
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Dumb Move
By Dave Klecha | March 6, 2009
My dumb move or someone else’s? Open question.
So, a little background. I don’t go into work stuff much for good reason–it’s not really anyone’s business–but occasionally something comes along that I feel like talking about. Anyway, the company I work for used to sell a software package and some related hardware by Company A, and we were exclusive distributors for it in Michigan. In the last year, that relationship ended, and Company A began selling the stuff through Company B, both of which are a subsidiary of a Big New York Corporation. But here on the west side of Michigan, we were still the beneficiary of their referrals for IT service and general sales and such.
Well, that ends this month as well. And Tuesday, a muckity muck with Company B called to essentially offer me a job. He didn’t come right out and say so, but he was “gauging interest” for the job. All things being equal, my interest in the job is nil. I don’t like working for big corporations (and yet, I was in the Marines–how ironic) and Company B, as a subsidiary of BNYC, is the epitome of such–uniforms, custom-painted vans, seventeen layers of regional managers and assistant regional managers and assistants to the regional managers and so on. So it was pretty much a non-starter there.
On top of that, there’s the growing bitterness/animosity between our company and Company B. Natural, since we’re becoming competitors where we were not before. But it all started to remind me of a situation I was in back in 2002 when I was working for a competitor of a company that had previously employed me. My previous employer was in… trouble. Mostly, as I understood it, filing for bankruptcy protection to be able to put a supplier at arm’s length in order to get a handle on some double- and triple-billing. But my then-current employer wanted me to dish dirt on the previous employer and help him steal my previous employer’s customers.
Did not want to be in that situation again.
So, yesterday I told my employer about the contact with Company B and this morning called and left a message for one of the people who had been talking to me and let them know I would not be entertaining any job offers from them. (And, it’s possible that the question was moot anyway–I signed a Non-Compete when I started work for my current employer and even if they were made to be broken, I wouldn’t really want to go through the ordeal of breaking it.) It’s definitely nice to have been asked but A) I have few illusions about why I was asked–merely as a convenient pawn in the growing battle between Company B and my employer–and B) I’m not sure they could have really made it worth my while. It was nice to dream for a while that they would go buck wild and offer me $100k per year and effectively end all my current financial troubles (though they are few), but I’m certain that quality of life would have suffered and radically.
If I get laid off soon, or the company evaporates out from under me, I may regret the decision–but for now I’m far happier with the decision I made.
Topics: life | 2 Comments »
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