White Sponsorship

My son received his team assignment for Little League baseball. The team is sponsored by the ¹ club.

I'm a little concerned. I asked around about them, but very few people knew anything about them. One person, the head of the local Little League, said it was a club for white supremacists. Interesting. My son is playing for Hitler's army.

One guy's word isn't good enough for me. So, I checked on the inter-web. Nothing. There is not a single website containing any information about them. That's strange. What kind of business/club would have no information about themselves available in the inter-web?

The next day I called the borough administration office for my home town. I'm not a quitter.

woman #1:	“Borough administration office. How can I help you?”
me:	“Hi. I was wondering if you could help me track down some information about a local business or organization?”
woman #1:	“We sure can. What is the business name?”
me:	“It's the club.”
woman #1:	“...What kind of information were you looking for?”
filter catch:	“Are they a bunch of racists?”
me:	“They're the sponsor of my son's baseball team, and I just want to know a little more about them.”
woman #1:	“I'm sorry. I can't help you with that.”
filter catch:	“No you can't because they'll burn your house down.”
me:	“Is there someone else there I can speak to about this?”
woman #1:	“Just give me a moment. I'll find someone to help you.”
(muffled sounds -- as she holds her hand over the receiver.)
woman #2:	“Sir? You how can I help you?”
filter catch:	“Sure, just act like the first woman told you nothing.”
me:	“I'm looking for any information you might have about the club.”
woman #2:	“They're a service organization sir. They do charitable things for the community.”
filter catch:	“Charitable things like...I don't know...rid our town of minorities?”
me:	“OK. Who's in this club?”
woman #2:	“They have an exclusive membership. You have to be sponsored by a member to become a member.”
filter catch:	“It also helps if you have a shaved head and spider web tattoo on your elbow.”
me:	“Do you have any other information?”
woman #2:	“They're a service organization sir. They do charitable things for the community.”
me:	“Right, you said that already. Do you have any other information?”
woman #2:	“...We haven't had any complaints about them... What were you interested in?”
filter catch:	“No? No complaints about lynchings?”
me:	“Anything. I have a name, an address, and brief generic description of what they do. Can I call them?”
(awkward silence)
woman #2:	“...ah...You...can do that.”
me:	“...OK, thanks for your help.”
woman #2:	“You're welcome.”

Weird.

The uniforms haven't been delivered yet. I wonder if we'll get white hoods instead of hats.

¹ Yes. I'm a total coward and don't like burning crosses on my front lawn. I will say that the name of the club contains the word "White" and the name of a 2D shape with only one edge.

Christmas at the Schumachers

On Sunday morning my son and I were watching the first Formula 1 race of the season. I had missed the first part of the race and when I started watching I was surprised to see Michael Schumacher¹ in second place. I wondered out loud where Ralph Schumacher² was.

son:	“...ummmm...he's in 13th place.”
me:	“...ok...”
son:	“...I wonder which one their dad favors...”

Ignoring the subconscious sibling rivalry occurring at my house, my son and I started acting out (that's what we do at the Mann household) the various awkward Schumacher family gatherings. This is what we came up with:

mom:	“Oh Michael! Merry Christmas! You're early. We weren't expecting you for another 30 minutes.”
Michael:	“Well, I can't help it.”
dad:	“That's my boy. Where is Ralph?”
Michael:	“Oh, he called me and said that he was running a little late. Flat tire.”
dad:	“Figures. That's what you get when you let the French make your tires.”
mom:	“Honey, don't be so hard on him.”
(the gift exchange)
Michael:	“Dinner was excellent mom. Here, this is for you and dad. Merry Christmas.”
mom:	“Oh my goodness. Our own Italian villa on a private island?! Michael, you shouldn't have.”
Michael:	“It's the least I could do.”
mom:	“How could you possibly afford this?”
Michael:	“Mom, remember, I'm the highest paid athlete in the world.”
dad:	“Thanks son. Fantastic.”
Ralph:	“I got you a little something too.”
dad:	“A gift certificate to have our driveway sealed?”
Ralph:	“Yeah, that company is great. They did my driveway. They wash...”
dad:	“Michael, does our new villa have a driveway?”
Michael:	“No, its only accessible by boat or helicopter.”
Ralph:	“Well, you can seal the helipad...”
dad:	“Is the helipad made of asphalt?”
Michael:	“Concrete.”
dad:	“The helipad is made of concrete Ralph. What the hell were you thinking?”
Ralph:	“Well, I didn't know that Michael was gonna...”
dad:	“No you didn't, because you never talk to your brother do you? Maybe if you spoke to him from time to time, you'd learn a few things.”
Ralph:	“But, I...”
dad:	“Shut up Ralph.”
Michael:	“Your new neighbor, George Clooney, is looking forward to meeting you. He's a great guy, you'll love him.”

¹ Michael the six-time world champion. Last year was a bad year for him. I thought he lost his edge...so this year...you can just imagine my surprise.

² Ralph is the brother of the six-time world champion. I don't remember Ralph ever winning a race. But he tries. God bless him, he tries.

I Hate Lawyers

OK. I know I'm wrong to say that. I guess I'm supposed to say "I hate The System."

This person could possibly win a lawsuit with a payout of $40,000 per bug bite.

Panama

I used to be a kick-ass guitarist. Now look at me. I haven't had a decent shit in two years.

Fun With Grammar

I was trying to think of all of the situations where the same word could be used two consecutive times within a grammatically correct sentence. I thought of three. Here they are all in one sentence:

I want you to take care of my children when I die, and if you do do that that will will include you as the sole beneficiary.

Crash

No I'm not talking about the film that won the Oscar for Best Picture. Oh snap! I am most prophetic. JC:1 Lurker:0.

I'm talkin' about my Linux box. My computer froze up over the weekend...and I haven't been able to reboot since. Ouch. To think of all of the things I've lost:

• Quake installation
• Kernel tweaks to make Quake run better
• 2GB of Quake maps
• Quake configuration files
• All of my Girls Gone Wild mpegs

Gettle's helpin' me though. He told me to run mkswap on all of my partitions. Thanks Gettle.

Plus, Skinny designed and implemented my backup and recovery system, so I'm sure I'll have no problems restoring my data.

Inkscape

I'm in love with Inkscape. Inkscape is an open source vector drawing application. There are executables for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux (I used the Gentoo ebuild).

• The kids love to play around with it. We have to set a timer so everyone gets equal time. My daughter enjoys drawing curvy lines and then assigning a text element to the line. She loves to type a sentence and watch as the letters flow along the line.


• It's great for creating icons and logos.


• It a pretty active project. Cool new features are added on a regular basis.


• Their documentation is pretty good, but most of time it isn't needed.


• There are many hot-keys that really accelerate the drawing times.


• There appears to be huge active user and developer community.


• It's developer-friendly. There is a scripting interface and lots command line options.