ApologetiX

Do you like Weird Al? Are you a Christian? Then you’ll love ApologetiX, the world’s best Christian parody band.

Seriously. They have some good stuff. I really enjoyed their parodies of Kid Rock’s “Cowboy” and Alien Ant Farm’s “Smooth Criminal”. Download some of the free MP3 samples and check ’em out.

Out of the mouths of babes

Last night, Susan and I were snuggling with the kids as they watched a bed-time video. It was Jamie’s turn to pick, and he chose It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. About halfway through, when Snoopy is doing his World War I Flying Ace bit, Mary asks, “Is he an actor, or a real dog?”.

It took Susan and me both a minute to compose ourselves and try to explain it to her 🙂

Monk

Susan and I watched Monk last night. It was entertaining, and the title character hooks you in by being extremely quirky (something that actor Tony Shalhoub seems to be adept at). I was a little disappointed that I was able to guess who the killer was, almost as soon as we saw him. Hopefully the other episodes aren’t that transparent.

In case you’re wondering, the episode we saw was Mr. Monk and the Other Woman. Spoiler alert: the plot descriptions on the web site give away the entire story, including the identity of the killer.

As an interesting side note, USA Networks is actually encouraging Monk fan sites, and they provide logos, banners, and character images. That’s a nice change of pace from certain other networks who would threaten lawsuits against people who set up fan sites devoted to a certain pair of FBI agents or to a certain dysfunctional cartoon family. Doh!

Broadband for my distant kin

We came really close to getting cable modems where we live. Close but no cigar. Earlier this year, they were laying fiber in our neighborhood. We were told that we’d have broadband internet access by the end of the year. Then, the work trucks disappeared. See, our cable provider is Adelphia. And they filed for bankruptcy. And they canceled the broadband rollout. Just three weeks from completion. It sucks to be us.

Of course, the inhabitants of Campbelton in Scotland can try out broadband over power lines, right now. [via Slashdot]

Bagpipers to Commemorate 9/11

As part of New York’s plans to commemorate the events of 9/11, five groups of bagpipers (one from each of the city’s five borroughs) will converge at Ground Zero. I don’t know what they’ll be playing, but odds are good that it will be Amazing Grace. Everytime I hear Amazing Grace played on bagpipes, it makes me cry.

It will be nice a couple of weeks later, to go to the Alabama Highland Games, and hear some more cheerful tunes.

Foot Freaks

Okay, all you foot freaks — here’s that picture I promised. These are my webbed toes. Sorry, no duck webbing, if that’s what you expected. It’s just that the 2nd and 3rd toes are joined by skin to about the 1st knuckle.

WebbedToes.jpg

I’ve created some forums for discussing webbed toes. Hopefully, this will be easier to manage than a bunch of comments on my blog posts.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Yesterday I (and my two “web team” coworkers) moved across the building into a new cubicle. We’ll miss shooting the breeze with Bill and Jason on a daily basis, but on the bright side (literally), I’m near a window now.

As part of my move, I’ve finally made good on my threat to set up my webcam again. The DougalCam is once again updating on a regular basis, and I even fixed the remote window function. Of course the downside of the window is that I have to position the cam so that the window is out of the shot, or the light washes out the rest of the picture.