Last night my wife and I met some friends at the Cokato Corn Festival.  (It is my friend Andy's parents' home-town festival.  Somewhere out by Lake Woebegone might be.)  It is a festival in a smallish town in the opposite side of the county in which I live.  We had a really nice time.  We saw friends, we took baby on the merry-go-round and the big slide (he screamed), we ate some pork chops, and we had all the corn we could eat. Kenny ate two pieces of corn. A...

Today on the Netscape homepage, I saw an interesting article on a newly created "android" from Japan.  The robot's name is "Repliee Q1".  This robot is apparently intended to be used for customer service or something like that.  The features are that the robot smiles, blinks, and appears to be breathing. Something this life-like is a little scary (like a wax museum), but it is still interesting to see.  I wonder where we'll see the first one of these in-use. ...

Recently my wife and I changed cable TV providers.  With the change, I was able to pick up some channels that I have been wanting for a long time.  The two biggest pluses were to get the VH1 Classic Channel, and the Boomerang (rerun cartoon) channel.  -Sadly I had to lose one of my favorites: The Game Show Network. On VH1 Classics they have a show called "Metal Mania" where they play the kind of music I loved in high school and college.  Tonight I saw an Alice Cooper (Hous...

One of the more prominent sports-related stories recently has to do with the NCAA's banning of Indian team nicknames.  Link This is a really interesting issue.  One can understand that schools have a long-standing tradition of using (or maybe "honoring") indian archetypes as mascots.  Also, one can see that objectifying a race as a mascot can have the effect of trivializing intricate cultures which are still observed. I doubt that any institution (or fans of a team) t...

For the past two days we've been holding a garage sale at my house.  On day one (Thursday), we had all sorts of visitors.  They bought all of our good stuff.  (I think that I priced most of the stuff too low!)  Today was significantly slower than yesterday.  I wonder whether Saturday will pick up a little... Outside at the start: Inside at the start: Kenny gets to play outside sometimes during the sale.  Here he was yesterday, playing what he call...

Tomorrow my wife and I will have a garage sale.  We've never done one before, so I hope that it turns out well.  Among the things that I intend to sell are some of the vegetables from our garden.  I have more tomatoes and cucumbers than I know what to do with.  (I'll have more to add each day.) Here's tomorrow's offering: While we're sitting out in the garage, we're planning to watch a few videos.  We picked up a few of our favorites from our local Japanes...

Since October 28, 2003 a lot of things have happened.  My wife and I have settled into our new house, we have had a baby, and we are waiting for a second baby.  I have started and continued working as a teacher, while my wife has worked with computers and in a coffee shop. I got a car, I have raised two nice gardens, I have covered three seasons of "American Idol" on my weblog (as well as "WB Superstar").  -My articles about TV shows seem to be my biggest "draws".  (I supp...

Like the headline says, "Hell's Kitchen" will be on for the last time tonight.  (I hope FOX brings that show back!)  Ralph will face-off against Michael to determine who wins their own restaurant.  For the final showdown, Ralph and Michael have to lead individual kitchens composed of eliminated contestants.  Brilliant twist!  I wonder whether the teams will be chosen like sandlot baseball.  If they're picked that way, I hope that the first pick is determined by ...

Today we took baby Kenny and MeiMei (Madeline) to the zoo.  Once we finished with the petting zoo, both babies had had enough.  The zoo is awfully stimulating for babies.  (Poor Kenny slept through his favorite buffalo exhibit.) Mei Mei Kenny

Today while I was looking through my garden, I noticed that vegetables (in addition to my tomatoes) are already beginning to be ready-to-eat.  In fact, a few of my cucumbers were already too big to enjoy.  (I hadn't even checked to see if any were ready yet.  I thought it was too early!) Here's what I gathered today.  Three cucumbers, and two green peppers. There will soon be hundreds of tomatoes in my garden.  Here are a couple of biggies, waiting to tur...

It is almost time for me to go to bed, but I see that my weblog has returned. A couple of weeks ago, we went to a parade.  Our son loved the horses, fire engines, and getting candy.  I don't recall seeing him having more fun. Getting the candy: Putting the parade candy into a bag: Enjoying the parade: Baby loves plastic animals.  All day long he talks about, plays with, and pretends about his plastic animals.  We found a bunch of plastic animals ...

My points, home visits, and comments counters haven't been increasing.  I can't tell whether I have new comments on a particular article without clicking on the "0 comments" link.  What's up with that?

This topic isn't my own.  The other night on the radio I heard a guy pose a question to the listeners.  The question went like this:  What's your favorite sport (to watch), and what caused you to like that sport so much? I thought that was good "food for thought", and I decided to write a weblog article about that. For me, my favorite sport is baseball.  I think that I can trace my love of baseball back to the Saturday afternoon games on NBC when I was a kid...

Recently while doing my morning workouts at the gym, I have been watching "The Price is Right".  The continued run of that show -in a basically unchanged format- for as long as I remember, is life-affirming, and brings me back to watching the show in summers past. Up to now, the most memorable TPIR moment for me had been that time when a lady lost her tube top while running down to contestants' row.  I remember her starting to "come on down", and then there was an edit (after she ...

Today I watched the new "Fantastic Four" movie.  Considering the reviews, I went away pleasantly surprised.  One of the biggest warranted criticisms of FF (taken from Ebert's review) was that the characters weren't adequately surprised by their sudden mutations.  I agree with that to some extent, however if the movie had spent more time on that type of stuff, it would have taken even longer to get to the plot.  (The "origin" part of the movie took up nearly half...