Why does society need so many slide shows?

The more technology, software, and gadgets that I see in the world, the more I realize that the powers creating technology must think that the number one plague facing society is that we don't have enough slide shows.

I mean seriously, have you ever stopped to think about how many things we have that make slide shows?

The original slide show was, of course, a legitimate slide show. You took photographs and turned them into slides. You took these slides, put them into a slide projector, projected them onto a screen, and told a story as you clicked through the slides of your slide show.

We were happy with this for decades.

Then came the personal computer. Then came PowerPoint. And you know what? PowerPoint is a terrific program that allows you to easily create slides and show them on a screen automatically. PowerPoint was technology's first major take on the slide show. Microsoft did, and continues to do, a great job with this program. It serves a great purpose and it's very useful.

But apparently PowerPoint wasn't enough. We needed more slide shows.

In addition to PowerPoint, Microsoft has created tons of other slide show utilities throughout the years:

• Additional versions of PowerPoint


• Screensaver slide shows


• Slide shows in XBox music maker


• Slide shows in MSN emails


• Slide shows in the MSN sidebar


• MSN Photos slide shows


• Windows Media Center PC slide show


• MSN TV slide shows

And who knows what additional slide show technology Microsoft is working on right now to satisfy society's insatiable need for more slide shows.

But Microsoft isn't the only one responsible for more slide shows. We also have an endless supply of programs that you can plug your digital camera into so that you can create slide shows anywhere and everywhere...on your cell phone, on your digital camera, on you TV, on a projector, and on your monitor.

Why? Didn't we used to make fun of slide shows as what boring parents made their kids and neighbors watch after they got back from a long trip? Why after being the butt of jokes for decades have slide shows now become one of the most prevalent things in technology?

Is this slide show push from the same people that resurrected the @ symbol from near extinction when they invented email? I have to wonder.

So I must ask the powers that be: Why does society need so many slide shows?

Best baseball game ever

I am happy to say that last night I went to the best baseball game ever...or at least the best baseball game that I've ever been to. It was the Cleveland Indians playing the Seattle Mariners at Safeco Field in Seattle.

It all started when I was gifted free tickets to the game during work.  I waited a little longer than normal to make it to the game.  This ended up meaning that we missed all of the normal traffic and still made it to the game by the first inning.

After getting an amazing hot dog and some beer we made our way to the best seats we've ever had at a game. We were just a few rows back from first base. We only had to wait till the 3rd inning to see the Indians hit back-to-back-to-back home runs! That's the first time I've ever seen that happen at a game I was actually at.

Not only that, we also made it on the Jumbotron, came the closest we ever had to catching a fly ball, saw two guys get hit by pitches, and even got to witness a bench clearing incident. The Indians had such a great game that they set several franchise records over the course of the evening.

Go Tribe!

Marriage license vs. marriage

I sure hope that marriage is nothing like getting a marriage license, because we just did that tonight and it was one of the most impersonal things we've ever done.

We drove up to the crappiest strip mall you've ever seen in a random town outside Seattle and walked into a tiny office. There were two other couples that got there about the same time as us, and as we walked in the woman behind the counter said, "I can do all three of you at the same time." I don't know if that's quite the phrase I was expecting to hear as I took a step towards spending the rest of my life with one person. It's just not the tone I was going for.

After filling out lots of paper work and getting chided for not filling it in correctly, we were blessed with the news that the actual license we fill out never gets sent back to us. Nope, we never see it again. Instead we get a decorative piece of paper that we can fill out ourselves whenever we want. All this service for the low low price of just $54.

I sure hope marriage is a little friendlier than the license.

Fish animal shelters

We were talking tonight about animal shelters and how much we love dogs. It dawned on me that I've heard of animal shelters for practically every type of animal around...except fish.

So I thought to myself, "why aren't there any animal shelters for fish?"

Is there no such thing as an abused or abandoned fish? Do people just not care as much about fish as they do about dogs and cats? Or, is it just that if a fish isn't doing so well then it pretty much always dies so any fish that would actually require a shelter probably wouldn't actually make it to the shelter.

I guess that's why you never hear of anyone driving down the road and finding an abandoned fish on the side of the road with no collar on. You never hear, "I noticed the little fella lying there shivering in the cold and whimpering, so I picked him up and brought him in."

Nope, Flipper just never gets rescued the way Whiskers and Scampers do.

Anchorman does not disappoint

Ron Burgandy lives up to his reputation.

Anchorman was a great comedy with wacky humor, great one liners, and hilarious characters.

Will Ferrell was terrific, but perhaps the funniest person in the whole movie was Steve Carrell, who played one of the dim witted sidekicks of Ron.

I totally recommend this movie to anyone who loves wacky comedy.

We're bored right now

So it's Friday night at 9pm, and Kenzie and I are just plain bored.

We left work just a little early to see a 5:10pm showing of Anchorman (which ruled by the way - possibly another post on that later). It seemed like a good idea at the time, but at this point everything's closed, we're tired of watching TV, and it's too late to really start doing anything interesting.

What should we do?

Well, obviously blogging came to mind so here we are...

My Jeep just turned 110,000

The greatest car of all time, my White 1990 Jeep Cherokee Limited with an amazing 4.0 L engine, just turned 110,000 miles today.

This is a momentous occasion in the auto industry.

Two guys are walking down the street...

They walk past a dog sitting there licking himself.

The first guy says to the second guy, "Boy, I wish I could do that."

The second guy replies, "Maybe you should just pet him first."

A grasshopper walks into a bar...

The bartender says, "Hey, we got a drink named after you."

The grasshopper says, "Wow, you have a drink named Bob?"

A horse walks into a bar...

The bartender looks at him and says, "Hey big fella, why the long face?"

Blogger Help

If you just need every day basic help, here's the place to go:
http://help.blogger.com/

For more advanced users, here's the hub in Blogger help that you can get some great tips and tricks from:
http://help.blogger.com/bin/topic.py?topic=12
http://blogger.com/knowledge/2004/06/hacking-blogger-matrix.pyra


Some common additions to your blog...

Add a link list to your template:
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=110&topic=22

Basic Panini Sandwich Recipe

I love to cook. I love Italian food the most, and there are so many great Italian dishes to make.

I'm getting married in about a month from now, and one of the things that my fiance and I registered for was a Panini grill. This thing is awesome.

We've experimented on the grill a little bit, and here's my favorite basic panini sandwich recipe so far:

- ciabatta bread (herbed if possible)
- ham
- buffalo mozzarella cheese
- olive oil
- salt
- pepper

Preheat your panini grill to just below its highest setting.

Cut the ciabatta loaf into sandwich sized pieces, and then cut those pieces in half horizontally so that you have a top half and bottom half for your sandwich. Brush both sides of each piece of bread with olive oil. Sprinkle the inside of one of the pieces of bread lightly with a little bit of salt and pepper. Assemble your sandwich with the amount of ham and cheese you desire, but make sure that the cheese is on the top.

Place the panini sandwich on the preheated panini grill and lower the top. Push down just a bit to make sure there's good pressure on the sandwich. Let the panini cook for 5-7 minutes or until the bread is crispy.

Take the panini off the grill and serve. Be careful since the panini will be hot.

Enjoy!


Don't have the tools for a panini? Look here...

     

Dodgeball makes an even better movie than it does a game

So we all know that getting a bunch of kids together to throw balls at each other for sport is great idea. But who knew it would also make an awesome movie?!

Dodgeball the movie again pairs Ben Stiller (White Goodman) and his wife, Christine Taylor (Kate Veatch), but this time they're on opposite sides. She ends up with Vince Vaughn (Peter LaFleur), who plays a struggling gym owner who's trying to fend off a takeover from Goodman's evil Globogym.

It's amazing how it just doesn't get old to watch grown men and women dress up in weird costumes and get hit by balls. It's hilarious.

Rip Torn (Patches O'Houlihan) also plays the crotchety old "Dodgeball expert" to perfection. His one liners are fall out of your seat funny throughout the movie.

I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll only leave you with one bit of advice from Patches:

You're about as useful as a poopie flavored lollypop.

Is there any movie better than Army of Darkness?

This is a serious question that does require more thought than you might think.

Is there really any movie that is better than Army of Darkness?

Army of Darkness is literally one of the funniest movies of all time. It's a horror movie that makes fun of itself the whole way through. It's a constant stream of hilarious one-liners, purposefully bad special effects, great characters, and those totally random moments that make a great comedy able to watched over and over.

Sam Raimi has made quite a name for himself lately with the Spiderman movies, but it was his great beginnings in the campy horror genre which really defined him as a director and movie maker. If you've ever seen Army of Darkness or any of the other Evil Dead movies then you'll surely recognize the scene in Spiderman 2 when Doctor Octopus kills everyone in the hospital surgical ward. It's classic Sam Raimi horror that's strait out of Army of Darkness.

So if you haven't seen Army of Darkness yet you have to!


Don't have Army of Darkness? Look here...

How is blogging different?

This is my very first blog posting, so I thought I'd start with a broad question and see what kinds of responses I can garner.

So here's a question for all of you out there: how is blogging different than creating your own website? I've read a lot of articles and posts about famous bloggers or famous blogs, but how is this any different than if those people had just created their own websites and updated them every day with new pages?

Is it just the fact that people can respond and reply to articles and posts? Is it because a blog is free?

And, how does the Wiki world play into all of this? Is Wiki simply a blog without state that anyone can keep editing over and over? Is there any way to combine the two technologies?

What do you think? Why blog instead of creating your own website?