Here is my cute update for the week. Around Ballston I was delighted to see a small squirrel, maybe four or five inches long (not counting the tail), eating a nut just a foot from a sidewalk. The baby squirrel wasn't scared when I approached it, and I stared at it for minutes. It was so adorably cute, and I have never seen a baby squirrel before. Later, as I tore myself away from the magnificent creature, I noticed a man walking his dog. The pair paused at the spot where I had stood, which I took to mean that the squirrel wasn't even afraid of the dog. I hope that baby squirrels are naïve, not that my cutest-squirrel-ever was sick. Either way, baby squirrels are ridiculously lovable.

The other cuteness of the week was my discovery of a great stamp set from USPS. Though I don't know a couple of those characters, Curious George makes the whole set an image of greatness. Wilbur is also particularly cute. If someone ever wants to get me a gift costing about $50, present me with a framed collection of these Curious George stamps lined up in Andy Warhol style.

If you want to read about my prospective student visit to Berkeley and then my subsequent vacation in Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska, read my new travel diary.

I saw this advertisement on Daily Kos. It links to MSNBC's "To Catch a Predator" series about online predators.

Here's the question: Isn't anyone who clicks on the ad implicitly admitting that they have pedophilic tendencies? That is, if the viewer of the ad begins to think about whether or not the girl is hot, then pedophilic thinking is already taking place. I think that MSNBC placed this ad in poor taste. To avoid showing MSNBC that I was referred to their site via the ad, I copied the shortcut and went to the site directly rather than by clicking on the ad.

Check out MSNBC's "Can YOU spot the mistakes on this profile?" feature; it's pretty cool.

I was going through some papers today and came upon the program for an Arena Stage play that I attended on September 15, 2001. This is from an inset:

I barely remember the days when we all rallied around the President. From September 2001 to recently with the latest Fox News poll pegging Bush's support at 33%, the last few years really have been quite the journey. I bet that whoever wins the presidency in 2008 or 2012 will be someone who speaks about America's greatness like Ronald Reagan did. We need such a figure to bring the country back together. Hopefully, unlike Reagan, the future president's policies can also return the country to innovative greatness. When will it be morning in America again?

It's much easier to post pictures than to write blog entries. From a visit to Great Falls Park on April 9:

I intend to write more about it sometime, but let me say, Miss California USA got robbed last night at the Miss USA Pageant. Miss Kentucky USA definitely did not deserve the crown.

This cartoon is a bit old (April 15), but I dreamt about immigration last night so I figured that I would post it on the blog:

What was the dream?

Comment by: Amanda | Friday, April 28, 2006 at 11:17 am

Woohoo, I sort of forgot that BitTorrent is such an excellent file-sharing system. Someone was talking about the new Tool album today and linked to this site: http://www.mininova.org/. It's truly fantastic. Highly recommended.

Fun fact: Today is the two-year anniversary of my job at the National Science Foundation. On a different note, I loved seeing this picture from a posting on Drudge:

Apparently the magazine will be out this Friday. I used to subscribe to Rolling Stone, and though I let my membership lapse, they continued to send me magazines for what seemed like years. I got a "final issue" notice several months ago but ignored it, as I had others. Apparently they were serious that time, for I no longer get the magazine. This was poor timing, because I missed two issues that I actually wanted to read, one with a review of the Ben Harper album and this one with the Pearl Jam review.

Pearl Jam and negative stories about Bush = excellent.

I downloaded the leaked self-titled album last week, and will give a quick review. This album is certainly the best of the last eight years, though whether it is better than "Yield" is debatable. There are no clunkers on the album, and though as always there is a mix of slow and fast songs, the album skews nicely towards rockier songs. Of the slower songs, I initially liked "Parachutes" the most, but my preferences are moving towards "Come Back" and "Inside Job." "Life Wasted" is the most enjoyable fast song, with some fun guitar work at the end, but "Army Reserve" is quickly becoming a favorite. Hearing "Severed Hand" on "Saturday Night Live" last week guarantees that that song will become a concert favorite.

In summary: the album flows very nicely and all of the songs should sound excellent live.

Grrr. Tonight was going to be the night to avenge my last missed Ladytron concert. Back in 2003 I had prepurchased a ticket to their show at the 9:30 Club. With my luck, it snowed or was icy that day, something, and the metro shut down. That never happens! So I had no way to get to the 9:30 Club and thus I missed the show. I was so angry about it at the time.

I figured tonight's show had no chance of selling out, but it just did. So annoying. I hate having to purchase tickets beforehand for club shows by not-really-huge artists. Often in the past year I have been denied going to shows because of sellouts. I blame the huge population explosion in the DC area and the fact that the U Street area is "cool again." Ugh. I'm going to become a bitter old man who whines about how I knew about the U Street area before all these young fools started adopting it as their area of choice.

I hate to kick a man when he's down, but yikes!, this from an AOL poll:

That's not a good sign for the next two and a half years. Good thing dealing with Iran (aka "slow Cuban Missile Crisis") requires a leader who has the support of his constituents. We're all screwed.

Cell phone pictures are generally worthless, but I still love to take them. Sadly, when my Gateway computer died last year, I could no longer transfer the pictures from my phone to my computer. I couldn't find the software for my USB cable so I installed some random drivers that I found online but they wouldn't work on my new Dell. Just today, after putting off the problem no longer, I finally found drivers that work! Thank you, FutureDial.

I love my cell phone camera because I can take (legitimate) shots discretely. More importantly, if I'm not carrying a digital camera with me, the cell phone camera works excellently, even if the quality of the VGA pictures (with my LG 6000) is garbage. In honor of this momentous day, here are two sample shots. I hadn't transferred photos since last July, and since the camera can only store twenty, I went a long time without taking pictures. But I did delete one picture to free up room for the picture on the right.

 

Excellent quality, right? The picture on the left is of the Ben Harper concert at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia on July 28 of last year. The picture on the right is of the girl who randomly kissed me at the Robert Randolph show this New Year's Eve (at the 9:30 Club). Clearly worth erasing a picture for, right? Heh, such a beautiful girl...

How do you move a cellphone pic to a computer?

Comment by: Amanda | Friday, April 28, 2006 at 11:19 am

Good. The immigration rally organizers surely read my post and the blogs of countless others that exhorted the protesters to carry American flags. Hundreds of people were exiting the Ballston metro station today when I was leaving work. I saw so many small American flags and only one flag from a Latin American country. Good work. Now you'll have people rooting for you.

Arrggg, CVS cash register man. My bill was $15.86. When I hand you a $20, a $5, and a $1, it should be obvious to you that what I want back is a $10 bill and then the remaining change. But no. You had to make a production of the fact that I overpaid you, returning the $5 and the $1, and then snapping the $20 bill and saying that such a bill would suffice. Thank you for giving me four $1 bills instead of the $10. I really appreciate it.

I'm looking forward to attending the Miss USA 2006 competition in a couple weeks. Since Baltimore is the host city, I figured that I couldn't pass up an opportunity to attend such a unique event. To the left is whom I will root for, Amber Brooke Copley, age 20, 5'7", brown hair, blue/gray eyes. Not only do I feel that I should root for my state's nominee, but I also find Amber to be one of the better candidates, with this picture reminding me of some of the old pictures of Hollywood starlets. Amber says: "As I have grown into a woman I have realized that I am beautiful just the way God made me, and I don't have to be like anybody else or look like anybody else to be accepted." How special. (I'm sure that she had difficulties with people accepting her the way she looked.) Now, two coworkers, a black male and a while female, and I went through all 51 candidates and picked out our top ten (Amber included). Here are our favorites, ranked in order of my preference:

2) South Carolina	3) New Mexico	4) California
5) Utah	6) Oklahoma	7) District of Columbia
8) Michigan	9) Missouri	10) Florida

Of course, all of the candidates are surely exceptional in their own right, but I'll be rooting for the above ones. Check back in a couple weeks to see how my favorites fared, as I'm sure I'll write about the pageant show experience. Here are the other candidates:

I didn't know that you went to the Miss USA competition.

Comment by: Amanda | Friday, April 28, 2006 at 11:21 am

Ah, what joy! At work we finally upgraded to Microsoft Office 2003. Slick, colorful, fun new features, so much pleasure this will give me. I am particularly excited that PowerPoint now allows for multiple master slides. This could not be a better feature! Now, to wait for Windows Vista to come out.

Best news article ever: Jump On the Buffalo Bandwagon (FOX News)
Best organization ever: National Bison Association

Basically, the Birchmere in Alexandria is the worst venue at which to attend to a show alone. With countless tables and a bar encircling the Bandstand's dance floor, a single person is forced to stand on the dance floor, in full view of most of the show's attendees. I went to Tuesday night's show to see Josh Rouse, arriving at a point when most people were still sitting down and eating. I was one of about ten people on the dance floor. It was fine, I don't really mind being started at, but I certainly prefer my ability to be inconspicuous like at the Black Cat or the 9:30 Club.

This feature of the club came to mind during (the opener) Strays Don't Sleep's final song, when the lead singer for whatever reason jumped off the stage and sung the entire song on the dance floor, moving from person to person and singing in a too-intimate-for-my-liking fashion. This would be fine at a normal club, since I rarely stand close to the stage, but at the Birchmere, by design, I was only fifteen feet from the stage. When the singer approached someone, the person would generally turn to their friends and smile or laugh (not condescendingly, but out of awkwardness). I noticed how open and alone I was as I thought up what to do if the singer came to me and sang to my face. I had no one to turn towards to smile or laugh. I would just have to stare at the guy awkwardly. Fortunately, he never approached me, but the lesson I learned is: Never go to the Birchmere alone, or certainly not for a show that requires forced crowd participation.

The best day of the year is tax refund day:

Take that, late filers!

Hmmm, this last weekend I was at a bell festival in Hampton, Virginia. An adjoining hall at the convention center hosted a gun show, and the below picture is much more exciting than any picture I took at the bell festival:

I had to take this picture late in the day, once the security office stopped guarding the entrance and tying guns. It was sort of funny in that for part of Saturday as people moved bell equipment, it was hard to tell if someone was carrying a long case of chimes or a gun carrier.

Interesting, from a Washington Post chat with a University of Arizona microbiologist:

Dr. Charles P. Gerba: .... Studies have shown washing hands, usually sanitizing hand wipes, and disinfesting wipes can reduce absentism and illness by 30 to 50%

Re: Door Handles: Does this include the door handles in the bathroom? Or should I continue to use paper towels, those impenetrable barriers against all things germy?

Dr. Charles P. Gerba: We have studied the microbiology of hundreds of restrooms over the years and the exit doorknob usually has the fewest number of bacteria on it of any place in the restroom. Why? Because half or more of the people have washed their hands before they leave the restroom. The doorknob on the entrance usually has more germs on it. So touching the door knob to me seems fine. The tap on the sink in the restroom usually has the most bacteria of any item you are likely to touch in a public restroom.

My dream office is still the Public Health School at Harvard, where I saw automatic hand sanitizer dispensers as well as wet naps for electronic equipment (like cell phones).