smokerblog

Only the DVD Left to Look Forward To

With the Return of the King now in theaters, we Tolkien geeks have only 50 hours of film and comentary on the special edition extended DVDs to view. See what I've got to say about the latest and final installment in Peter Jackson's adaptation of the Tolkein novels.

More Fun from Google

Google's got another new feature that they've been quietly developing. It looks like a direct competitor to Amazon's search inside a book feature.

This feature allows you to search the contents of books for words or phrases and provides links to online booksellers. Actually, the "contents" being searched look like publisher-provided excerpts, not complete book contents (as on Amazon), but expect that to change in the future. In their faq, Google states that their "mission is to provide access to all the world's information" and they recognize that "not all the world's information is already on the Internet." This sounds like Google is looking to eventually become the world's online library. Given current copyright law, how they do this will be quite interesting.

To see this feature in action, try a couple of examples: frodo baggins site:print.google.com or bah humbug site:print.google.com. Or, type your own phrase along with "site:print.google.com" into a google search window.

Geek Comic Reviews Geek Movie

My new favorite online comic, PvP has a well-articulated review of what I'm sure will be one of my favorite movies of the year (when I get around to seeing it).

Snow and Song

Friday Kari and I took off work to see our nephew Noah perform in his Kindergarten Christmas Concert. There are few things cuter than 3 dozen 5-yr-olds singing holiday tunes. A favorite was an arrangement of "Where is Santa?" sung to the tune of "Frère Jacques." The cute part being when the kids imitated Santa's deep voice while holding their hands out in front of them in imitation of bowl-full-of-jelly bellies.

We got back to town on Saturday just in time for the snow. I decided that it would be better to shovel 3 inches of snow 5 times rather than do it all at once. You do the math.

Buddy's Story

I just added a new link to a page I wrote about our struggles with Buddy's separation anxiety. Kari has posted a couple of messages to a bulletin board trying to help others deal with the same problem, so I thought it would be cool to post something similar here.

Those who know Buddy can appreciate how thankful we are to have persevered and ended up with such a cool dog and loving companion. In that spirit, I've posted this page hoping that it might be helpful to other frantic dog owners searching the internet (like we did) for "separation anxiety" remedies.

Thanksgiving Stats

Some statistics from the 2003 Metzger Thanksgiving Dinner and Turkey Bowl:

turkeys cooked: 2 (not sure of the lb.-age)
pots of potatoes mashed: 2 (thanks to Joe)
pies: 6*
types of stuffing: 3*
attendance: 43*
final score of the Turkey Bowl: 7-3 (or something like that)
Turkey Bowl injuries: 2
Turkey Bowl MVP: Joe M.
faux strip-tease performances: 1

As usual, the most trying part of the day was deciding how many helpings of dinner to have while still leaving room for a thorough sampling of pie.

* - I think there may have been 7 pies and 4 kinds of stuffing and more than 43 people in attendance, but my triptovan-induced state prevented more reliable data collection.