Mark Hayward Is My Hero

It’s easy to remember to complain when something is terrible, but it’s much harder to remember to praise when something is great.

I absolutely love my web host. Dreamhost.com makes it so easy. I am pretty good with computers and figuring things out, but even with the help of my good friend Harper I can’t always understand everything I need to know to run my websites. Dreamhost spells it all out, and has a great sense of humor about what they do. Also, they do a really good job of playing to all levels of knowledge. It’s clear that they really know what they are talking about, AND they have that rare and valuable understanding that not everyone else knows what they are talking about. I truly have no complaints so far with Dreamhost.

Partly I’m writing about Dreamhost because they are great, and if you are thinking about changing hosts, or starting a web presence, I can’t recommend them highly enough. The other reason I’m writing is that if you click this banner, which names me as the referrer, I get paid. Everybody wins.

I would recommend Dreamhost to anyone who asked, even without the referral program, it’s just that this program is what got me going to actually write about it. So if you need hosting, click the banner and sign up. You won’t regret it.

In a mad blitz, my friend Matiss and I played 50 rounds of WeeWar tonight. It was amazing. One of the great things about WeeWar is that it is turn-based. That way you can play with a bunch of people, and they can just take their turn when they are able to, rather than everyone having to be online at the same time. So that means that normally people only play a few rounds a day… not fifty. Needless to say, I’m a little cooked right now, but this definitely scratched the WeeWar itch that was plaguing me.

We’re playing a particularly ridiculous game at the moment where we have limited the units to Guys for me and Tanks for Matiss. I cleverly called it “Guys vs. Tanks”.  You can see the game here.

PS: If you click the banner above and sign up, I get extra credit, and may someday become cool.

I can’t believe it. 66 degrees! From now on I’m changing the phrase to, “I think I’ve died and gone to Pittsburgh.”

I mean seriously… this is incredible. This is supposed to be the time of year when we suffer in the cold, all bundled up in layers, and I was out walking with my dog in the park in short sleeves. I didn’t think that Pittsburgh could get any better than it already was. I like winter, and I’ve always said that I would love to live in a place that has a real winter, but maybe just one that’s not quite so long as a Wisconsin winter. Now it seems that I have accidentally found such a place. Today we broke the record of 64 degrees that was set back in 1998. Amazing.

Yup. You read it correctly. Tonight I was on the NBC Nightly News.

Screenshot from MSNBC.com

They were doing a story on the writer’s strike and how it affects shows that are run every day like The Tonight Show, and Late Night with David Letterman, and one of the clips they used when talking about Letterman was of me doing my Stupid Human Trick. Now both my Dad and I have been on the NBC News without having to commit a crime, or fall into a well.

For a short time you can see the video here on the NBC website.

For a longer time you can see the story on YouTube here.

If you recorded the show by chance, I REALLY want a high-quality copy of this broadcast, and I’d be very grateful if you could help me out.

WOO HOO!  We got a new Prius!  Traded in the old one, which was great, and got this one  which is even more fancy.  The voice-controlled navigation and bluetooth cell phone action is amazingly cool.  I can’t wait to navigate in convoluted Pittsburgh now.

It was awesome. Unfortunately, since I had recorded them off pay channels, I was forced to watch the vastly inferior cropped non-widescreen versions. You wouldn’t think it would matter that much, but when two characters are having a deep moment, and you can only see half of one of their faces on one side of the screen, and just an ear on the other side of the screen, you really notice the difference.

I watched Episode 1-3 on Saturday, and 4-6 on Sunday, and since I have never watched them all so close together, I had never noticed that C3-PO gets blown apart in almost every movie.  And it’s always hilarious!  What a great thing to have a character who makes you laugh every time they get an arm torn off.

My Star Wars binge reminded me that I want to own all the movies on DVD.  After some searching on the internet, it seems as though there is no such thing as six-movie box set.  Weird.  There was one 11 disk set that I found, but it was foreign I think, and it seemed risky.  Like maybe it was bootleg, and you’d have a copy of a film that was made by some dude sitting in the theater with a video camera, chewing on popcorn right next to the microphone.  I guess I’ll have to wait.

Tonight we finally get a chance to see the first-ever footage of a living Giant Squid.  It’s been almost a year since this one was caught by Japanese researchers off the Ogasawara islands, south of Tokyo.

AP Photo/Tsunemi Kubodera of the National Science Museum of Japan

The show airs twice tonight, at 8pm Eastern, and 12am.  See the listings for yourself.

I have been on an Ebay bender this week, and listed 12 things in the last few days.  Of course my pal Dazzling Dave was all like,

“Bender?!?  With 12 items?  That’s nothing.  I’ve got 586 listings this month.”

Thanks for the morale boost Dave.  Ya jerk.

If you want to see the crazy assortment of stuff I’m selling, check it out here.

If you’re on Dave’s side, check out his stuff here.

photo: Kidjurel  from BloodyDecks.com

In doing a Google Image search for oarfish, I found a really great forum entry with some incredible oarfish photos.  Check it out here.

I just made a new cookie recipe, and the horrible monstrosities that came out of the experience have taught me some valuable lessons about baking… that I already knew.

1. Don’t start a baking project at 11pm. Especially when you just said aloud, “I don’t know why I’m doing this now. I’m tired. I should go to bed.” I guess the temptation of nice, room-temperature butter was too much to bear.
2. Flour is what gives cookies substance.
3. When you already know your oven runs hot, turn it down. Cookies burn when they get too hot.

I have a tendency to start baking a little too late at night. I think it’s because that’s when I most wish I had a cookie. I guess I get so fed up with the lack of cookies in my house, that I just have to do something about it. Normally 11:00 at night isn’t too late for me since I tend to be a night owl, but this time it was.

I found what looks like a great Double Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe on the internet, but I suspect that it is really a much better recipe when you use all the ingredients, and use them in the right amounts. Here is what the cookies are supposed to look like:

The problem is that I only used half the flour (see lesson #2 above), and forgot the vanilla entirely. When you don’t use all the flour, you get something that is more appropriately described as a caramelized Demon Cookie.

Behold:

Not only is it super flat (like it’s trying to seep in to steal your soul), but it’s made up of a basically empty shell, with chocolate and peanut-butter chips hanging out inside their own cookie-sized opium-love-den-of-sin… or something. Despite all the short-comings though, I have to say that they were delicious.

I will try again with this recipe in a few days, and with luck I will actually follow the directions too.