Welcome to tastypopsicle.com

I've decided to open up the weblog archive. At one point is was closed off except to registered members due to an incident, However, that company has since closed its doors so they can just eat it. Use the search to find something that youmight be looking for. Maybe you'll find it.

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Birthdays come and birthdays go. It does feel a little different being 27 now. I guess everyone feels a little different as they get older. I had an eNjoyable birthday on Saturday with family (in-law) and friends. First, it was dinner with Amy's father and other friends of the family. They came out to our neck of the woods so that made it easier. Tried eating at one place but they had a 4 hour wait (there were 11 people in our group) so we said to hell with that and instead went to our favorite place in the western 'burbs - Taylor Brewing. Nice little micro-brewery with good food and great drinks. It comes highly recommended if you're ever in the area. After dinner we headed out to Transit night club. They were having some birthday V.I.P. thing or something. While we did get in and we did drink plenty, and we did get our bottle of champagne - it was probably the worst organized thing I've ever seen. They people there were inconsiderate and frankly impolite at times. Our crew did the best that we could with an awkward situation. Sorry if I was a major ass and I'm very happy that those that could make it out did. I feel bad for those that weren't feeling well or just had a bad time in general. Next year we'll do things differently. On the gift side of things (always the fun part) I received

• The semi-new Motorola MPx200 mobile phone - one sweet phone I tell ya
• Nintendo games: Rad Racer, Legend of Zelda, and Dr. Mario
• Nintendo "Roots" messenger bag - great for carrying the old laptop around
• "Lucky Charms" pajama pants
• OXO Good Grips offset bread knife
• "Curb Your Enthusiasm" - first season DVD set

Overall - I think I made out quite well. Mom's card/gift is on its way. Oh - and it was so nice to get the birthday calls from my brothers and sister and Chris all back at home... :) - Thanks to everyone for making this year a special one.

testing the ability to blog from my new phone

After the great rainfall last night, how WONDERFUL it was to wake up and hear that the wind was gusting around 60 MPH. Yea! That could only mean one thing of course - delays on the roads. And to boot, a woman was giving birth on the side of the road on the Stevenson which was only helping to increase traffic times on the 55. Oh what fun! Did you notice the previous post? I've set it up so that I can post messages to tastypopsicle from my phone. The chances of me really using it - eh, probably slim to none, but it's still kinda cool.

I know you've seen them too - hell, you might even have one (lucky S.O.B.). I'm talking cars and minivans with flat screen TVs and DVD players built in. Incorporated into the family bus to help keep the brats (I mean, children) quiet (what I mean is, entertained) their use and audience has expanded. I recall a recent drive in which I spotted "Lilo and Stitch" playing in the car in front of us. It was interesting that I could clearly make out what was on the screen and I could easily identify which movie it was. Well, CNN.com has reported a more-common-than-you-think scenario: people playing prOn in their entertainment on wheels.

"Just like there's no windows in a strip club, you shouldn't be able to see inside windows in a car when they're watching X-rated movies," said Carlton, a 26-year-old from Gurnee, Illinois. As for Carlton, she was driving in the Chicago suburb of Buffalo Grove with her daughter when Catherine glimpsed the sexually explicit movie. The experience last fall upset the girl and angered Carlton.

A series of co-ordinated bomb attacks on Madrid's commuter train system killed at least 186 192 202 people and wounded over 1,000 at the height of the city's rush hour. "This is probably Spain's worst terrorist attack in history -- not probably, surely our worst terrorist attack ever."

Of how pleasant - tastypopsicle.com was mentioned on the thingsmagazine.net website 09 March 2004. I really don't know why and they didn't really elaborate. All it says is "Visit the Tasty Popsicle". Yes, this is the Tasty Popsicle. :P Also, to my Grey Tuesday visitors. Sorry, but the album is no longer available on this site. However, I HIGHLY recommend checking out the Jay-Z Construction Set. Download the torrent file (as I did) or look for it on your favorite P2P network. Word.

My youngest brother, Dan, arrived in Chicago early Saturday morning. And aside from having a bad case of food poisoning from the night before things were FABULOUS (please sense the sarcasm). I felt so ill Saturday you wouldn't believe it - not to mention I got almost no sleep the night before. It was terrible. THEN we're waiting for almost 2 hours for his baggage only to learn that no one knows where any of the baggage from his flight is. CURSE YOU UNITED! We filed a claim and then they delivered it later that evening. So, I guess it was OK except that I was dying, remember? I came home and slept while Amy played video games with Dan. Feeling a bit better later on I decided to head to the city to take Dan to the Bulls vs. Laker's game - except when we got there we found out it was SOLD OUT! Sold out?? Since when do the Bulls have a sell out game? And we were already parked in - oh what a day this was turning out to be. Since we couldn't get our car out we took the Blue Line into the city and just walked around. Got something to eat at Chili's off of Grand Ave. (Why Chili's? because fuckin' Rock Bottom said everyone had to be 21 to get in that night and ESPN Zone was an hour wait. We needed to just sit down and rest.) Ate, got on the Red Line, transferred to the Blue and made it back to see the entire lot empty. Our car was still there, thankfully, so we headed home. Sunday was a day of rest and Monday was a North Chicago/Museum Campus day. It's been fun and interesting and we still have a couple of days left. Today we're heading into the downtown area to do the Sears Tower/Michigan Ave/John Hancock touristy stuff. We might even make it to Navy Pier if we head out of the house soon. BUT all of this leads me to one thing and it has nothing to do with Dan visiting. It does have everything to do with Chicago, though... Thursday night at Transit is the one and only Sandra Collins. Maybe I can make it out for a bit to see her. I think it's only $5 if you get on the list or something like that.

What a long day. I imagine that anyone that hasn't worked in almost a week is going to have a lot to do when they get back. But, I did do a lot and I felt extremely productive and I'm actually looking forward to getting back to work on more of it next week. Most of it's busy work - updates to the site - but there are some cool things that I need to finish up. And speaking of finishing up - I did it! I got it done (well, 95% of it - the rest is stuff that doesn't matter to the general public). I'm speaking about the new section of tastypopsicle.com "rate stuff". This was an idea that I've had for the site for a long time now and I've been working on it for a few months on and off. But after being as productive as I was today at work I decided to carry it over and finally get my website jazzed up. Non members can only read the ratings, they can't participate (boo hoo to you - Join tastypopsicle.com if you want to play). For the tastypopsicle.com crew I hope that you eNjoy using it. I know I will... :)

Those who must argue that based on religious, biblical beliefs, gays and lesbians should not not be allowed to marry should possibly reconsider quoting versus from the Bible to support their goals. Just file this one under "Contradictions in the Bible" with the many, many others. (via Boing Boing - via The Common Good Network

Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21) A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut 22:13-21) In lieu of marriage, if there are no acceptable men in your town, it is required that you get your dad drunk and have sex with him (even if he had previously offered you up as a sex toy to men young and old), tag-teaming with any sisters you may have. Of course, this rule applies only if you are female. (Gen 19:31-36)

Remember children, the Bible can be used to support or refute ANYTHING. Use it to your advantage. For instance I can prove that unicorns do exist because the Bible says so. Take a look at the King James Version (at the University of Michigan) so that you too can browse it and quote it wisely.

Downhill Battle of Grey Tuesday fame (which I graciously participated in) has launched a new project that is sure to become a a HUGE resource in the near future. The new project, Banned Music, is:

Bannedmusic.org is a peer-to-peer collaboration that makes it impossible for the major record labels to ban or censor musical works. When record labels send legal threats to musicians, record stores, or websites, we will post the music here for download and publicize the censorship attempt. There is a clear fair use right to distribute this music, and for the public to decide whether current copyright law is serving musicians and the public, they need to be able to hear what's being suppressed.

Basically, it's a place to go to get the info about DJs and other musicians who use sampling in their work. And to boot - it's where you can go to get the torrent files for the music. Currently The Grey Album is on the site and a new Jay-Z/Metallica mix by Cheap Cologne called "The Double Black Album".

The Double Black Album is a remix of vocals from Jay-Z's Black Album with music built from samples of Metallica's Black Album. Cheap Cologne received legal threats from the RIAA, forcing him to remove the album from his website. Interestingly, he received a phone call the next week saying that the letter had been a "mistake".

I haven't downloaded it yet but I plan on checking it out. You should too. And on a personal/technical note: tastypopsicle is *almost* 100% XHTML 1.0 STRICT validated. I can vouch that many of the pages are already though, like about me, resume, music, photo blog, and photo gallery. The main page is getting a lot closer and I look forward to the day when the whole site can validate and is built using only proper CSS and XHTML (with the exception of a few data tables). You know what does validate as XHTML 1.0 TRANSITIONAL? keepingyouwell.com. I'll never be able to validate it strict, though, because I scrape a lot of content from 3rd parties that refuse to code properly. Hell, they aren't even consistent in their coding. At least if they were consistent in their craptacular coding I could fix it. Bah! Oh, and Happy (belated) Birthday, mommie. :)

One thing that I really miss ever since we moved out to the 'burbs has been RCN as my cable television and high-speed internet provider. I am stuck with Comcast because there is no competition out here. I liked RCN because 1) my descrambler worked on their system 2) they have TechTV I liked watching TechTV when I would come home at night. Fresh Gear, and The Screen Savers, CyberCrime, and Big Thinkers were some of my favorite shows. Well, it was announced today that Comcast bought TechTV and they will fold TechTV into its own games channel, G4. Now, G4 is only available to Comcast's digital cable subscribers so I don't think that I'll be able to get TechTV with my basic cable. But, this might just convince me to become a digital subscriber after all.

When I used to go to Crobar every weekend a few years ago (like Fall 1999 - Fall 2000) you saw some crazy things and occasionally the police would be outside but nothing ever really got out of hand. And while I don't go there anymore (I don't think I would even if I did go out a lot simply because the place is a completely different type of club now) it's always fun to see old places in the news - and with government officials to boot.

Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch, a Democrat in his second term as Minnesota's chief law enforcement officer, measured his criticism of authorities because he was still waiting to talk in person to his daughter Elizabeth, 22, who suffered a possible wrist fracture during her arrest outside Crobar, 1543 N. Kingsbury, around 3 a.m. Saturday. Her sister, Anne, a DePaul University student, also was arrested. "I'm not going to excuse my daughters' behavior. . . . Clearly, at 3 a.m., they had to be intoxicated," Hatch said in a telephone interview from his home. "She's [Elizabeth] very much a feminist. As opposed to somebody who would let it go, she was making a scene," Hatch said. "They appropriately told her she needs to leave." Elizabeth did, but she tried to re-enter the club to retrieve her purse. Club security summoned police, and things got ugly. Elizabeth allegedly struck an officer in the face, knocking off his glasses, police said.

And this is the best part:

Anne didn't help matters, Hatch said, by kicking out a rear window in a police squad car.

She kicked out the rear window? How the hell do you do that? I've NEVER seen someone kick out the rear window a squad car. Not even some crack-head on COPS. This is just a continuation of political leaders who have daughters that tend to get a little crazy when they're all hopped up on something. They should all make a group out of this or something.