Month: November 2003

My mother has often told me a story from my childhood about myself that I will relate here, although I have no first-hand memory of it.

My mother was attempting to potty-train me. In those days, around 1975, although disposable diapers were catching on, they were still expensive compared to using old-fashioned cloth diapers. I was raised to the cloth, I guess 😉

Those of you who know me well know that I am very literal-minded. Although I have grand dreams and aspirations, I’m very grounded in the real world; I tend to take things very literally. It often impacts my comedic timing, because I won’t realize someone’s telling a joke. I’ll take the barb personally and try to carefully consider what the person was saying, completely missing the sarcasm.

Anyway, the way my mother worked on training me was to show me where the poo-poo goes. (I apologize for the plethora of poop stories here in the last week, my brain is focussed a lot on excretion lately I guess.) To give me a sensible understanding of where I’m supposed to do my duty, rather than in my pants, she would take me by the hand and lead me to the bathroom. There, she would patiently remove the soiled undergarments, dump the contents into the toilet, say “ooh, yucky,” and flush the contents down. If I recall correctly, she would then rinse the worst of the mess off the diaper there in the toilet so there was less to wash off later.

I watched her do this several times, and she finally became very excited when the light bulb seemed to turn on, and I got it!

I approached my mother, took her by the hand, and led her carefully to the bathroom. There I raised the toilet lid, pulled down my pants, took off my soiled diaper, dumped the contents in the toilet, said “ooh, yucky!” then flushed it down.

The moral of the story? Actions speak much louder than words… or intentions 🙂

Sadly, I only kept one journal entry for the entire four days or so I was in St. George and Las Vegas. Darnit. Oh well, we have a few pictures I’ll upload later. And I apologize for the second half of this blog sounding like a Worldmark advertisement! Anyway, here’s the entry…

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Barnson St. George Vacation, Day 2

The sounds of a waterfall and the squeals of delighted children waft up to my ears on the second floor balcony of the “Worldmark the Club” St. George resort.  Some more hardy souls, all children, brave the sixty-eight degree weather to snorkel in the pool beneath the small waterfall.  As I peer down now, though, most are, instead, hanging out in the hot tub.

My children are playing on the playset in the sand near the pool, obliviously sliding down the slide, swinging, and traversing the horizontal bars, without a care in the world.  They seem grateful to be outside playing in a small “park” after several weeks of cold weather in our native Tooele.

It’s amazing to me what a difference in the weather a few thousand feet of elevation and five and a half hours of driving can bring.  Utah’s Dixie is really, really different from the area around Salt Lake we just left.  In the Salt Lake/Provo area, we had left in the midst of a driving rain/sleet combination, with the precipitation falling so fast and thick that we were often relegated to driving forty miles per hour in the midst of a sixty-five zone.  Traffic was heavy, accidents were littering the sides of the freeway, and it was rather stressful.  About ten miles south of Provo on I-15, though, traffic finally cleared out, the rain lifted, and the rest of our trip was rather uneventful, except for a few bathroom breaks and a gas stop.

We scheduled this trip, ostensibly, to attend the wedding of Christy’s first cousin, Heidi.  Heidi’s getting married in Vegas to some guy who’s name neither one of us can recall at the moment.  Apparently, the two knew each other in high school.  They had crushes on one another in high school, and never pursued anything… apparently, he’s been married and now divorced after several children.  They ended up on the same airplane together, began comparing stories, and decided to begin seeing more of one another.  They did a long-distance dating thing, with him in Las Vegas and her in Orem.  And now they’re getting hitched.  Pretty cool for them, and a great excuse for us to get out and chill out!

The St. George Worldmark resort is pretty nice.  If you aren’t a Worldmark owner, and have a chance to sit through a Trendwest Resorts presentation, here’s what I suggest:

1. Be sure you have about $8,000 to spare.  That’s the going rate for a minimum entry into “the club”.  For those yearly vacations, I consider this number totally worth it.  We haven’t been to a Worldmark resort yet that we did not like.  If you can’t afford that amount of money in cash (you can bet your butt we didn’t have that kind of dough laying around), then you can normally get financing for under $200 a month.  Trendwest, Worldmark’s promotional contractor, will finance you, but they charge relatively high interest rates.  Better to walk in knowing exactly how much money you have to invest.  That $8,000 will buy you roughly the equivalent of a week of vacation at a nice resort somewhere in the western U.S.
2. Ensure you can afford about $400 per year in maintenance fees.
3. Hawaii, Australia, and RCI exchanges are relatively expensive places (in points you purchased) to attend.  Even with a modest amount of points, though, you can make it there on a minimum investment.  You just need to save all of last year’s points, use this year’s points, and borrow against next year’s points 🙂  Not too big a deal.
4. Here’s our favorite part: make sure you have some Worldmark resorts close enough to drive to easily.  They have a feature called “Bonus Time”.  Basically, if the resort has rooms free, if you schedule with two weeks notice or less, you can go to the resort without spending your yearly points, and just pay a fee based on the season and “color” of the resort you’re going to.  The Las Vegas resorts, for instance, are red year-round.  Bear Lake, in Utah, is very cheap in the spring and fall because, well, you can’t ski there in either season, and you can’t swim very easily there in either season.  It’s very nice for a cozy getaway for two or for a family.
5. Your membership is an asset.  You can sell it, give it away, or let friends use it.
6. Once you’re a member, expect every-other-month calls from a Trendwest representative trying to get you to buy more points, sign up for some new promotional deal, or whatnot.  That’s a small annoyance, but it doesn’t take us much to say “no”.  I make sure and  differentiate the marketing company, Trendwest, from the wonderful resort company, Worldmark the Club.  The Club rocks; the marketing company is, well, a marketing company 🙂

We really love it.  Our traditional arrangement these days is a 2-bedroom condo.  They are quite nice.  They always have a kitchen with good cooking amenities (for us, pretty equivalent to our home, but fewer dishes), and a pull-down “Murphy Bed” built into the wall of the common room.  This room we’re in now has huge walk-in closets for both bedrooms.  We’ve never been in a Worldmark room that wasn’t really well-designed and comfortable.  They spend a lot of time on the decor of their resorts, and it shows.  This is no hotel room.  We really feel like we have a temporary home here.  And often, we find ourselves wishing we could stay a lot longer!

Heh, the only tough question is, “is it worth the $8000 debt and $400/year we spend?”  In my opinion, absolutely.  We’ve paid some interest, but built great memories.  And knowing that we have a yearly budget for vacations that amounts to several thousand dollars, and points we need to spend or else they will expire, gives us an incentive to make time every year to go on vacation together as a family.

These are precious memories that are worth any price, in my opinion.

So, I’ve been on Atkins a couple weeks, and now I’m starting to experiment here and there with some “fake foods”. My latest research involves Maltitol. I thought I’d share some of the results of that research…

Maltitol is a sugar alcohol that is not completely absorbed by the small intestine. The result is that, despite its very sugar-like taste and bulk, it doesn’t generally spike insulin levels, and many of the carbs go down the crapper unabsorbed by your body. But it turns out, to most of the bacteria in your low intestine, a carbohydrate is food. Period. Even if it’s a sugar alcohol. This results in interesting effects that are generally tactfully referred to as “the laxative effect”. Thought I’d share:

Maltitol makes me fart. I had thought that I lost that capability after seriously starting to low carb and it was sad because I had a pretty good reputation as a stinky ripper! I had an identity crisis in the works.
Now, I can joyfully report that I’m back in action thanks to the **tol sugar alcohols. Of course, the aroma is not nearly as devastating as it once was but at least the “sounds” are there so I can at least offend one sense. I guess you can’t have everything.

–“Tony D.”, usenet, asdl-c

For a few, the laxative effect is pronounced, and even a small amount will trigger unpleasant symptoms.

—lowcarb.ca tip

>Funny story, I found some jelly belly jelly beans at an airport store
>one night waiting for a connecting flight. On the front it said made
>with Splenda. One serving is 35 beans. So, I counted out my beans and
>ate em. About an hour later, on the plane, I thought I was going to die!

Same here. Those things wiped me out — cramps, diarrhea, the works. If you read the fine print on the package (VERY fine, I might add), they suggest that if you’ve never had them before that you should eat *half* of one serving.

I don’t handle sugar alcohols well, and those things were by far the most terrifyingly explosive mistake I’ve made so far. Yikes! Never again.

–“Dawn”, Usenet asdl-c

I had bought a shitload of Russel Stovers Pecan Delights (the SF Maltitol kind)…..they were in a big pile on the kitchen table — right there where I could see them everytime I walked by. So, Friday, Sat night, and Sunday were “Attack of the Maltitol Consuming Monster” on RS Pecan Delights (not Sat daytime ’cause I had a date then so I had to get myself under control long enough for that) . It was quite the explosive & smelly weekend too:(

–“Roger Zoul”, Usenet, asdl-c

The moral of the story? Be very, very careful when playing with fake food. It may blow up on you, and not in your face.

That said, I bought a box of Russel Stover mint chocolates tonight — the low-carb kind (that seem really similar to the “sugar free” kind, except they cost twice as much). I guess being unemployed is as good a time as any to experiment with potential gastrointestinal disasters…

Is the cost for web hosting low or what?

I’m preparing to switch web host providers and astounded at the low cost of hosting. When I joined the Board of an organization last summer I noticed that they were spending $100 a month for web hosting. If you look at today’s market rates, $100 is about 5 times more than we should be paying.

Such offers from Dreamhost.com and Omnis.com make it so that you can have a website up an running for under $150 a year (n/i domain registration, of course). How have prices fallen so far for bundled host services? My guess is that as processing power increases while the cost of technology decreases, it’s easier to cram multiple domains on one web server without losing reponse and service time.

I thought I was going to get screwed with the obligatory multi-year contract and early cancellation fees but everything has been waived, including set up fees. Is it too good to be true?

Anyway, wondering if the techies want to ring in with their thoughts on the matter…

Sam

I was driving home with my wife, and we were listening to the ever classic “Liscense to Ill” by the Beastie Boys. You know it.. “You’ve Got to Fight For your Right to Party”, “Girls”, “Brass Monkey”, “Paul Revere”, “Crafty”.. and a host of others that have aged like fine wine next to the other outdated 80s songs. (This came out BEFORE Wang Chung’s “Everybody have fun tonight”.)

And she says to me.. “I DON’T GET IT.. Theyr’e just NOISY!!” And right there.. we aged 60 years, and died of old age.

Thats all.. thats my entire post. I just don’t believe it.

I’m gone for the weekend. I’ll be back on Monday. In the meantime, Justin, Jon, Sam, whomever — you guys toss some funny stuff up here, would you?

Unfortunately, this means that I also won’t be approving any anonymous comments, and I fear for the state of my inbox. But hey, it’s nice to get away for a while, and I’ll be taking my laptop to record some of the experiences!

In case you are interested, we’re heading to St. George, Utah. It’s about an hour northwest of Las Vegas. We’ll be hitting Vegas for one day over the weekend, but since neither of us really likes to gamble, our money will be staying safely in our wallets. A wedding will take place Saturday afternoon in Vegas, which is the ostensible reason for us going. And we plan to spend a good part of the evening watching the free shows along the Strip. If I recall correctly, even in November, Vegas stays comfortably in the sixties and low seventies, so here’s hoping it’s windbreaker weather rather than heavy coats!

Over at slashdot.org, they have a pretty nifty feature. As a subscriber, for free, you can keep a “journal”, or “blog”, of sorts. It doesn’t have nearly the nifty features I get here with Drupal, such as photos, private messages, recipes, etc… but nevertheless, since they are hosted on such beefy servers, over such a massive connection, with hundreds of thousands of daily readers, it’s a compelling proposition to maintain one’s weblog there.

This morning, for the first time in several months, one of the people I’ve flagged as a “friend”, Ironica, posted a new journal entry. And it’s compelling.

Ironica offers a potential way to begin returning more accountability to the health care industry. Not doctors, specifically, but requirements for the common good of mankind that certain drugs (AIDS drugs, for instance), after the company has recouped their investment, begin mandatorily lowering prices. I’m not a fan of government intervention, but there are certain industries where it is ethically acceptable, and possibly even necessary, that regulation intervene in the interest of protecting consumers from otherwise rampant fraud and extortionary pricing.

What do you think about Ironica’s idea?

IMPORTANT NOTICE: The following story is definitely “toilet humor”. You’ve been warned; if you are of delicate sensibilities, you may not like it. If you enjoy funny, weird stories, this may be right up your alley.

Mom, that means you! I think it’s pretty cute and funny, but you always made bad faces at the dinner table if we told these kinds of stories…

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It had been a very, very long movie for five-year-old Zachariah Matthew Barnson; nearly three hours is pretty much his limit. As we stumbled out of the theater last winter where we’d just seen “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets”, Zach looked up at me with pitiful eyes and said “Dad, I really have to go to the bathroom!”

We pushed our way through the crowded lobby, watching male after male surge through the men’s room door. They all sported the famous look of concentration and disinterest on their faces that says “I’m going into a room where about a half-dozen strangers will be holding their private parts and urinating while staring at the wall. And I need to stand next to them and do the same.” Women are lucky. You always have stalls. Men are forced to stand three inches from enormously fat, smelly men on either side and pretend they don’t feel uncomfortable pulling out, erm, sensitive parts in full view. I mean, there are some concealing measures you can take, but they are at war with the “how long should I dig in my pants to give the impression I’m well-endowed?” reflex. If you try to be modest, you just know the guy next to you assumes he has a bigger one than you.

Women, I don’t intend to gross you out with that description. But, I mean, I need you to understand the kind of hostile environment men are in when they enter a full restroom. You’ve got this kind of discomfort, palpable in the room. Society thinks it is OK to have urinals without walls. And there are twenty men lounging around the middle of the room, eyeing one another and each one wondering “can I take that urinal that just freed up without ticking someone off?”. It’s rough!

Anyway, we pushed in with the rest of them. Wall-to-wall men. I mean, packed in so close, you sure hope one of the guys in a stand-up stall isn’t your friend, because if he waves at you he is sure to spray a neighbor.

So, Zach and I stood around for a few minutes, me trying to look like I don’t have to go myself while steadfastly avoiding looking other men in the room in the eye, him clutching his backside desperately in that kind of lip-curl, eyes-crossed, knees-knocking uncomfortable squirm which causes every adult in the room who isn’t his parent to try to get a little distance before the explosion.

We waited for a few minutes. Zach and I entertained one another with knock-knock jokes while we waited. It helped; he stopped the Potty Dance long enough to laugh before remembering how bad he had to go. And then…

Poof

The men’s room cleared out. I mean, it seemed like one minute, the place was filled to the point I’d have guessed a fire martial would have forced people out due to exceeding the room’s capacity — you know, the little note posted on the wall — and then, like BOOM, Nada. Zip. Zilch. Nobody else in the room. It was quiet, except for the steady “drip, drip, drip” of water trickling from the sink faucet someone failed to close completely.

“Well, Zach, looks like you can take your pick!” I told him, gesturing to the stalls. “I’ll just use one of the stand-up ones over here.”

Easier said than done.

I viewed the scene before me in dismay. Abused urinals stood rigidly against the wall, silent sentinels suffering in subjugation at the indignity of human excrement. One sported soap, quietly, slimily dripping from the handle. Who had washed their hands before using a urinal, I wondered. Urinals commonly feature a little "pee on me" plastic grille with a bar of deodorant in the middle. One seemed to have been pushed up the right-hand inside of the urinal as far as the curvature would allow it. Someone stuck their hand in there to move it? It appeared that several of the former users of the utilities had friends walk in and waved, for the evidence of shameful aiming abilities abounded. Finding a suitable urinal, I finally began to take care of business, without worry of timing on the pants-digging, nor care for perception of the nonexistent people on each shoulder.

BRRRRAAAPPPP!!! The singularly most resonant, full-featured, diarrheal gas-passing I had ever heard echoed through the empty, tiled men’s room.

Holy crap! I thought to myself. “Zach, was that you?” This was a singular explosion, worthy of a forty-year-old with irritable bowel syndrome.

From behind Zach’s stall door, I heard a quiet, tiny giggle. Imagine a shy five-year-old covering his mouth trying to stifle a laugh, and you’ll get the picture. He sounded so cute!

“Heh, that was a really good one, dude!” I shouted over my shoulder toward the stall door as I zipped up. “I bet you can’t do it again!”

FLOOSHFWUBWUBWUBWUB! An even more magnificent turd-toss followed the first. It sounded as if the small human in the stall had passed his own body weight on the second try.

“That was AMAZING, little guy! I give that one a nine out of ten,” I laughed as I sauntered nearer the stalls. “Come on, I bet you can beat your last one. That was totally impressive, dude.”

Another tiny giggle echoed from the chamber. He was probably doubled over in pain from this experience, and doubled over laughing at my comments. I warmed up to the game, noting how funny he thought the whole thing was.

FLUBNUBNUBWAPWAPWAP–SPLORSH! Obviously, he had hit his stride. “Aww, little dude, that was nothing. Eight and a half, tops!”

Zach’s tiny voice inside the stall said, “No, that was a nine.”

Several more gas-passings happened. I couldn’t believe the carrying capacity of his tiny little body. He must have been in dire need during the movie, and not willing to miss a minute of the movie to take care of business. We began ranking each fart, shouting “Seven!”, and then “Twelve!”, but the diarrheal noises gradually tapered off.

I briefly thought to myself, “What a special bonding moment between father and son. This is something we’ll remember forever.”

I was right.

I heard a toilet flush.

I heard a click from the stall next to Zach’s.

I watched a very large, forty+ year-old man step out, wink, and proclaim “Show’s over!” as he strode to the exit.

Yep, that’s a moment I’ll remember forever, all right!

The Matrix is a pretty cool movie. Now witness the coolest thing ever as you watch a favorite scene in ASCII!. That’s right, you too can enjoy ASCII animation. It helps to have your browser font size set very small, or have a high-resolution (1280×1024 or higher screen). Watch it. Love it. Live for the ASCII characters…

Important note: this is pretty big. It takes a while to load, even on fast connections.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, the “other summer” has begun with two huge releases this weekend, and there is no end in sight.

Since last wednesday, “The Martix Revolutions” has kung-fu philosophized its way to north of 80 million dollars (domestic), and Will Ferrell’s “Elf” has charmed its way to over 30 million in two fewer days. IT HAS BEGUN!!!

So, to honor my new favorite Movie season, I present to you, in order, the notable releases from here until New years.. And whether you should see them.

THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS: (out now) Saw it, and it was fine. Parts of it (almost 80%) were actually really really cool, but it suffers from being too big for its britches, bad dialogue, and.. well, I don’t want to give anything away. Better than Reloaded to be sure, but still, compared to the original, its a bit of a stinker. Still, I’d see it.

ELF: (out now) Will Farrell is a human raised by Christmas elves. Saw it, and it is the best Christmas movie in a decade. Our kids will be watching this in years to come.. see it on the big screen for great family fun. See it, see it, see it.

LOONEY TUNES: (11/14) Back in ACTION: Bugs Bunny and Brendan Fraser. Early reviews on this one are terrible.. someone close to the production has said it makes Space jam look like Shindlers List. Skip it.

MASTER AND COMMANDER: (11/14) Russell Crowe, check. Awesome book, check. Looks promising, but our expectations for seafaring movies has been raised so high after Pirates, it may be hard to live up to. I’ll probably see it.

THE MISSING: (11/19) Kate Blanchett (Galadriel in LOTR) has a missing little girl and Indian Tommy lee Jones has to help her. hot off his Oscar win, Ron Howard Directs.. and he did a good job of the missing kid thing in RANSOM, so I’ll probably check this one out.

CAT IN THE HAT: (11/21) Reviews are mixed, but the trailer makes it seem bloated and overdone, kind of like the Grinch. That being said, I like Mike Myers, and I kind of like parts of the Grinch. Proceed with caution, but it may be worth a look. I’ll see it, maybe.

GOTHIKA: (11/21) Halle Berry in a supernatural thriller.. or is it a psychological thriller.. that’s the mystery. Reviews are excellent, so my own distaste for Ms. Berry’s ruining Bond and the first XMEN notwithstanding, it may be worth a looksee. But not for me.

BAD SANTA: (11/26) Billy bob Thorton is a mall santa.. but the reviews have been middling and the best stuff from the previews is just a footnote in the already exceptional ELF. It is also less family friendly. I’d just see Elf.. even if it is for the second time.

HAUNTED MANSION: (11/26) My fave disney ride on the big screen. And after the success of Pirates, I have high hopes. Reviews have been mixed, though, and the trailer makes it look okay. Problem is Eddie Murphy, who is 50/50 on making really good family movies (Doolittle) and really bad ones (Klumps). But, rest assured I’ll be there.

TIMELINE: (11/26) The book was great, and it explores my favorite idea.. modern guys go back in time and fight against medeival guys. Conneticut yankee with punch and braveheart battles. I am so there.. Haunted Mansion/ Timeline double feature.

HONEY: (12/5)Jessica Alba (Dark Angel) dance movie. Nobody will be there, neither will I. Reviews are mixed/negative, and the trailer is boring. How fun could a movie with a trailer this boring be. Skip it.

THE LAST SAMURAI: (12/5)Tom Cruise as an American who becomes ingrained in Japanese Bushido society. And lots of Samurai epic battles. Reviews are good, and the preview is just awesome. I will forgive that time Tom Cruise was rude to me, and I will be sitting in the theatre for this one.

LOTR: RETURN OF THE KING: (12/17) Heeere we go. All early reports is that this puppy is better than the two before. Its darker, more serious, but also more emotionally engaging. I have already set up 3 seperate get togethers about this movie. I will be there again and again and again. You should be too.

MONA LISA SMILE: Well, I will be tehre for this, but not by choice. It is, of course, Julia Roberts as a teacher. Yeah, the early reviews are okay, but rweally, this is just to make my wife happy. I have liked about 2/3 of what Roberts has put out recently well enough. I’d just as soon see an ELF LOTR double feature.

PAYCHECK: (12/25) Ben Affleck in a memory erasing thriller. I’ll probably want my memory erased if I see it. Maybe on video.

PETER PAN: (12/25) A big live action Peter Pan. Well.. not for me. it seems gratuitous. I liked the cartoon. I liked HOOK. I don’t need this story visited again. Consider it skipped.

CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN: (12/25) Well, the trailer is funny enough.. the cast is fresh.. Steve Martin and the WB crowd. Perhaps, but by then, movies I haven’t even heard of will be sweeping the nation for Oscar consideration. (I hadn’t heard of Beautiful Mind until like 5 weeks before it came out.) It will probably be a renter.

Yes, I know, its a lot to see.. but that is part of the joy for me now.. the holiday movie season.. now.. What will YOU see?