Idiots in charge of our schools

I rarely met a principal that I liked throughout my education. From elementary school on up. I just find it interesting how many moron principals are showing up in the news this week:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10570399/from/RSS/

http://www.thekansascitychannel.com/news/5558077/detail.html

Fun Online Tech

I like to share cool online apps when I find them. I'm some of you have found these and played with them, but for those who haven't behold and be amazed:

Writely is an online word processor that is pretty smooth despite still being beta. I heard about this on the TWiT podcast over the weekend. It's not bad at all, fairly snappy, and most importantly free. Also has collaborative document features, and the ability to import documents. This will be one to watch to see how it matures and how long it takes one of the of the big companies to buy it or develop something similar.

Speaking of the big companies the second cool online app for today is Microsoft's Windows Live Local powered by Virtual Earth, whatta mouthful. As much as I like Google Maps and some of the other new dynamic maps out there by Amazon and Yahoo, this one by Microsoft is providing the most entertainment for me right now. Being able to look down at my house using the bird's eye feature is just too cool.

Top Five Christmas Movies/Specials

Tis the season to be jolly and tis the season to be watching Christmas specials. This is a time of the year where I log many more television viewing hours then I usually do. I'm enjoy watching the Christmas movies, cartoons and documentaries. I was watching Christmas Unwrapped on the History channel last night before going to sleep, I was locked in...just found it fascinating. Their references to a variety of the Christmas movies & tv specials had me thinking about what are my true favorites, the ones I can't get through the year without viewing at least once.

This will be a countdown ala Casey Kasem style. Starting at number 5 and working our way up to number 1.

Number 5. Santa Claus is Coming to Town: This Rankin-Bass stop motion classic is fun on two levels. First off its one of the origin of Santa Claus stories, which is just cool. Finding out how the big man got to where he is today is just an interesting little tale. Secondly, there are some fun voices and quotables in this movie that are hilarious to repeat while watching this one with my wife. The Burgermeister Meisterburger is the most fun of them all for me. I could speak in that voice all day...and just might one day.

Number 4. It's A Wonderful Life: This is another movie with plenty of fun quotables and voices for me, but it also used to signal the beginning of the holiday season for me. When I was a kid NBC used to show this movie immediately after the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Only recently they switched over to showing a dog show after the parade, so I've been forced to watch the movie on DVD...which is fine. This is an often imitated story, but it's never done quite as well as the original. This is one is good for a couple viewings during the Christmas season.

Number 3. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer: I know this one is hardly a surprise pick. What can I say, I never promised that this would be a list of "deep cuts" or obscure picks. Does anyone but me notice that Santa is a pretty crusty, intolerable crank through most of this little tv special? I mean his attitude towards Rudolph's nose wasn't too jolly at first. Gotta love the Abominable Snowman.

Number 2. How the Grinch Stole Christmas: Dr. Seuss story brought to life by Chuck Jones and narrated by Boris Karloff...man it doesn't get better. And yes I'm talking about the animated version. I'm not talking about that live action version with rubber-face funny man Jim Carrey. The live action version couldn't make it on this countdown even if I was blitzed on spiked egg nog and wassail.

NUMBER 1. A Christmas Story: Jean Shepherd's hilarious, semi-autobiographical tale of Ralphie Parker and his family is by far my favorite Christmas movie and one of my favorite movies regardless of the season. There are too many reasons I love this movie to boil it down to a few. Even though the time period was set decades before I was born, it still gets across how Christmas felt when I was a kid. My brother & sister love this movie just as much as I do, so watching it with them in the best. We have whole portions of this movie memorized. I know TBS or TNT puts this movie on continous loop on Christmas Day, I still watch it a couple times that day if I can, at least in bits & pieces. Since I know every portion of the flick I can watch it for 10 minutes for a good chuckle and move on.

Honorable Mentions: Polar Express, Charlie Brown Christmas, Frosty's Winter Wonderland, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

Let me know your favorites... you might remind me of another that I like. Heck I might have to stretch this into a top 10 now that I'm thinking more about it.

I Don't Know What I Want for Christmas

What do you want for Christmas?... A question that I've been asked often the past couple of weeks. Quite honestly I don't know. It just doesn't seem to be as easy anymore. When I was a kid, I'd circle & put stars next to all kinds of stuff in the big Sears Christmas Catalog or the Wish Book, whatever they called it. Actually we had a code system my brother, sister, and I would have our individual "symbols" when we marked stuff or we'd use our first initial. The Amazon wishlist has kind of taken the place of the Wishbook. I'm not going to put a link to my wishlist, folks who know me can find it easy enough.

The things I want aren't really material things anymore. I don't need anything and I buy myself what I want when I can. The one gift I'd like is time. More time to spend at home, more time to spend with the few friends and family I have, and more time to spend doing the things I enjoy like drawing and writing. Time to just sit down and stop for awhile without letting worries, obligations and concerns of day to day life invade my thoughts. Time would be a great gift. Unfortunately it seems to be a commodity that has been increasingly rare lately, at least for me.

This Christmas all I can think about is next Christmas. That'll be the first Christmas with our son. He'll be going on 8 months old so his first Christmas should be great. That's a gift that I can't wait for. I was very fortunate to have great parents and siblings who all contributed to a happy childhood. I want my son to look back on this childhood with similar feelings. And while he probably won't remember his first Christmas, I still want it to be special.

Revenge of the Wintry Mix

Hey there gentle readers. December and specifically the Christmas & New Years holiday season is always a busy one for me. In addition to prepping the house for the eminent arrival of our son next year my Lady and I had to prep the house for the holiday visit of my in-laws. I love and actually like my in-laws, so that isn't a problem. I get along with them just fine. It's just a different kind of cleaning necessary for visitors then it is from organizing the house for the kid. We kind of had to shift gears getting the place ready for the holidays. Having a housekeeping service go through the place this week reduced our workload considerably.

It's a good thing we had that service come through on Tuesday, because surprise surprise, my in-laws arrived 3 days early! Ah yes, my life is full of such pleasant surprises. It's what keeps me getting out of bed everyday :-)

Along with my in-laws came another round of fantastic winter weather. Winter has come early to the DC metro, this already our 2nd winter storm and are only in the middle of December. Today with two weather system colliding it doesn't seem like the sky can figure out what it wants to do. We've got a mix of snow, rain and sleet all coming down at one time or another all day today.

What always makes it worse around here is the fact that no one around here knows how to drive in the weather. Some find the whole issue of driving in inclement weather so overwhelming that they quite literally abandon their vehicles on the side of the road around here. It's just crazy. Heaven forbid the ice or wind knocks out the power to traffic signals, because the concept of a four way stop is totally lost on the morons around here. Perhaps if people actually used their headlights when driving in this weather they'd notice the traffic signals weren't working.

I'm very thankful that I have a short commute with my current job. So my exposure to this weather induced chaos is minimal. But honestly people if any Washingtonians read this, don't buy into the panic. Just remain cool, drive like you have sense and everything will be fine.

Coolest USB Peripheral Ever... USB Air Darts

I found this one on digg.com, very very cool!

USB Darts that you can control the aim and firing mechinism from your computer mouse when hooked to your standard USB port.

I have to find somewhere in the USA where I can order these things, as cool as they are I'm not paying the shipping costs to get it stateside.

read more | digg story

BIGFOOT!

Oh man oh man, I just read this on BoingBoing this morning. Apparently there has been a new Bigfoot siting. A guy took some new photos of what could be a sasquatch last month while hiking through Silver Star Mtn, Washington. Holding up the tradition of little detail and inconclusive photo evidence, this looks like a good modern day BigFoot photo.

I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff. Not that I believe these sitings, but I love reading through all the research done by the people who do. BigFoot along with the Loch Ness Monster, alien abuductions, ghost hunting, all of it is fun stuff. When I was in high school working part-time at the county library whenever I had a break I'd hang out in the section of the stacks where there were all kinds of books on this crap. Every now and then I think how fantastic it would be if one of these creatures was proven to exist.

I guess that's why I was so enthralled by the giant squid video taken by Japanese researchers. Though much, much more grounded in reality then BigFoot since corpses and other solid evidence had been found, the Giant Squid was a beast that had reached legendary status. Actually see one living was pretty cool.