tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-215121852024-03-07T20:56:00.387-06:00Siberia, Minnesota'Minnesota is like Siberia with family restaurants.' Joel and Ethan CoenUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger480125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-8673841709748952642011-05-27T22:40:00.004-05:002011-05-28T00:13:17.113-05:00Saying goodbye to the ost important person to never know my nameTonight I find myself mourning for a man I barely knew, but whose leadership and personal drive provided me with some of the best years of my adult life. This afternoon, Frank Wood, former owner and publisher of the Green Bay News-Chronicle died at the age of 82.To be clear, I only met Mr. Wood on a handful of occasions - a Christmas party one year, around the office a few times, nothing major Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-33699395479327743422011-02-27T19:38:00.005-06:002011-02-28T21:03:51.243-06:00Fighting the Good FightI have a new mission in life which has become a nearly all-consuming passion taking up all of my free time that is not dedicated to fatherhood, shoveling or napping. In a few short hours, I hope to complete 100% of Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption.Needless to say, my wife is thrilled.I don't usually complete games, mainly because I have so many more important and fulfilling things going on in my Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-72742390534849360852010-11-02T11:25:00.007-05:002010-11-02T12:30:38.553-05:00The sound of democracy is silentYears and years ago when I worked for a weekly paper on the Southwest side of Chicago, I wrote a short editorial on the one-year anniversary of 9/11 that spoke of my trip to Washington, DC and how I was impressed by how little had changed in the past year.I wrote of sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in the middle of the night with friends and how comforting that was in light of Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-48544946033642884412010-10-27T14:29:00.004-05:002010-10-27T16:04:52.362-05:00Are we there yet?Hopped up on the first episode of "When We Left Earth" I was pretty excited to see a story yesterday about missions to Mars. While most of these stories center on the costs, technological shortcomings or the existential question of exactly why we'd want to do that, this story had a different angle:What if we planned a mission to Mars, but didn't have to worry about the return trip?It's an Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-39416692025203446742010-07-27T16:10:00.005-05:002010-07-27T16:38:59.793-05:00Wait, you're not any smarter than I am, are you?I got one of those "remember when" text messages the other night when Neal checked in to ask if I remembered an ill-fated late night bike ride to try and get a new Dave Matthews album in college. It's worth pointing out that we had no really solid idea of where the Best Buy was in Green Bay, my bike and fitness levels should have precluded me from trying this and it was the middle of the night Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-13545137984310092032010-02-23T10:40:00.005-06:002010-02-23T12:35:12.922-06:00The 365th DayMy son turns one tomorrow. In theory, he should be turning one some time in May, but his early arrival leaves us with a February birthday and that's something we've now accepted.We've also come to terms with the simple facts that not everyone we shared our NICU experience with had the same wonderful outcome and that premature births are going to continue to impact people as long as there are Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-58070688757121652162010-01-15T19:44:00.008-06:002010-01-15T21:25:49.052-06:00If you build it, that's a startIt all started with such promise when my wife and I dipped our toes into the world of suburban public transit:Bus-train-bus. No driving, no parking headaches for a change.8:53 AM Dec 9th, 2009Then, those high hopes sunk a bit a day later:Two strikes, PACE! Way to suck again jackasses.6:40 PM Dec 10th, 2009And lately it's been downright hostile:Dear PACE transit - in case you forgot, you still Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-63621633940558173492010-01-06T20:17:00.004-06:002010-01-06T21:35:21.664-06:00I know it's a rough economy, but some things just aren't helping mattersAbout a year ago, I posted an ad on Craigslist to hire a part-time staffer for office work on weekends and occasional hours during the work week. We were paying $10 an hour for this and in any given week, the staffer would be getting under 20 hours.In short, it was a pretty basic job, not paying a lot and primarily on weekends and I figured the hardest part would be finding someone who would bothUnknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-13564556686582488822010-01-02T19:59:00.004-06:002010-01-02T20:55:53.977-06:00What a wonderful age we live inThe wash of end of the year "Best Of" lists was made much worse this week by the one-two punch of the year and decade ending. I even issued a minor plea via Facebook to call off the onslaught of lists that took up time and space on web sites struggling to get anything up in the week between Christmas and New Years.Sure, it's nothing new, but with the advent of embedded video, it seems like this Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-90043774391924381932009-11-10T10:22:00.003-06:002009-11-10T10:58:37.445-06:00OK, then what happened?In the mix of finger pointing about irresponsible bloggers and posts that only fed page views because of shock value, I've noticed that mainsteam media outlets have been just as guilty.Case in point is a video clip from the front page of this morning's Chicago Tribune which takes you to the video of a woman falling in front of a train in Boston. The link simply says: "Raw video: Woman falls in Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-14122995017909177482009-10-29T20:02:00.004-05:002009-10-29T21:41:35.916-05:00Less is goreWired put together a list of 10 Creepy Video games for Halloween and while I don't think I have played many of them, I did see a kickass new trailer for Bioshock 2.I'm not going to lie - while playing through the first one, I hit a point in the game where, late at night, something jumped out at me and I shrieked like a little kid. I may have peed on the couch a little, I can't really remember at Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-21151540365233031012009-09-28T12:52:00.003-05:002009-09-28T13:08:57.147-05:00Things I will not miss about the city1.) Cubs traffic - there are hundreds of roads other than Lake Shore Drive, so why do you have to add 20 minutes to my commute?2.) Street parking - Especially if you own a larger vehicle. One of the plusses to our old neighborhood was plenty of street parking, unless it was a Friday or Saturday night.3.) Rush hour on the El - Once a month, I'd melt down after being packed into a noisy metal box Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-2304103077941105002009-09-18T21:40:00.005-05:002009-09-18T22:37:58.115-05:00The trouble with Randy (How I learned to stop worrying and love the short sale)The months of waiting are over and my wife and I closed on our first home this afternoon. None of this (big picture wise) is possible without my wife, who thoroughly rehabbed my credit score (that's another story), spearheaded a house hunt while caring for a newborn and quarterbacked the network of agents, mortgage brokers and lawyers from start to finish.The story ends well, with us in a new Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-34484465207074856032009-08-17T16:27:00.008-05:002009-09-07T20:34:20.567-05:00I am a person like meOn the night my son was born as I waited anxiously for the nurses on duty to finish running a multitude of lines, I wandered about in the halls of the University of Chicago's Comer Children's Hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).Over the course of eight hours, I had gone from the mind-numbing boredom that comes from managing a tour company in Chicago in February to a new father, worriedUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-60779548047934139742009-06-11T10:25:00.004-05:002009-06-11T11:56:11.731-05:00Being a better main characterYears ago, I was assigned a writing exercise that was designed to give the writer focus in an attempt to better approach daily life. We were tasked with writing our own obituaries, not to make us better writers, but to make us pause for a bit and try to outline an arc of our next 50 years.I've done this a few times since then - less lately, because my wife found a copy once when we were dating Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-55158957704271621422009-04-07T11:06:00.000-05:002009-04-07T12:18:44.058-05:00Life is rarely a neat little packageIn college a few years back, I had the privilege of taking afew courses taught by an exceptional writer who was also very talented as a teacher (an odd combination, to say the least). One of the more lasting comments she'd written on a short story of mine boiled down to a suggestion that the reader didn't need everything tied up in a neat little bow.Life is rarely black and white and I was tryingUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-39472835380660862552009-03-24T18:30:00.005-05:002009-03-24T18:30:05.688-05:00Socialism and other dirty wordsThe reason for the sudden content drought here (aside from simple laziness) has been the birth of my son, who arrived a month ago today. While this event usually throws a wrench into the best laid plans, his birth has been particularly jarring as it was three months early.Needless to say, it's been a hectic four weeks.Through all of this, my wife and I (but mainly my wife) have received a crash Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-56171380555242938002009-02-22T20:36:00.004-06:002009-02-22T22:48:23.754-06:00Two sides, one coinWe're spending a lot of time in class this semester discussing the logic behind how we think. I'm pretty sure this is to better frame the concepts of adult education for us, but it's interesting nonetheless.With this comes discussions of Robert Kegan's orders of consciousness and how we see the world in relation to ourselves. In a gross oversimplification, can we see the forest or are we Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-36151034358194240312009-01-26T10:07:00.002-06:002009-01-26T10:08:39.700-06:00Has it come to this?I saw this option pop up on my TiVo a little while ago, but just assumed it was an early April Fool's joke.Apparently not.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-77784369315581444692009-01-20T13:46:00.006-06:002009-01-20T14:43:11.923-06:00On Hope, ChangeI am on my lunch break right now, watching the Inaugural luncheon and getting ready for the parade to tie a big bow on the meat of the day's events. Sure there are plenty of parties to keep an eye on tonight, but as far as the big ticket items go, we're getting to the end of the road.From election night to today, I've been thinking a lot about the man I helped to elect and how all of this fits Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-89609340927826465422009-01-19T13:49:00.003-06:002009-01-19T14:08:18.489-06:00One more dayAbove is the reaction of Robert Kennedy, addressing a crowd of supporters on the evening the Rev. Martin Luther King was shot in Memphis. I heard a story about this a few weeks ago and the fact that Kennedy basically spoke off the top of his head and appealed to our better nature.He was already scheduled to speak in a rough neighborhood in Indianapolis when he received word that King had been Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-12903334106125363292009-01-07T12:38:00.004-06:002009-01-07T15:02:36.882-06:00Doors swing open, doors slam shutOne of the best things parents do for their children from the day that they're born is to lie to them. Regardless of race, age, social status, region or religion, almost every child with a parent present is told the same thing, "You can be anything you want to be."We're all adults here, we know that sadly isn't the case. It's still one of the greatest things that a parent does for their child.We Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-60185524572529023332008-12-31T09:40:00.004-06:002008-12-31T13:45:49.485-06:00What will you do with your extra second?In a quirk of modern timekeeping, we'll have a leap second this year - details here if you are stuck at work today and you're desperately looking for something to read - which obviously begs the question, "What can you actually do with one second?"In all honesty, I can't think of many things you can do with that extra second. I think it would be pretty fun if the Times Square countdown Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-12959779681166103152008-12-17T20:30:00.003-06:002008-12-17T21:57:55.635-06:00Maybe I should be a bounty hunterSo, there's not that much on Wednesday night TV these days.Sure, I could probably do 100 other things - that's counting the Netflix streaming directly to my TiVo and Xbox 360 - but most of those require more effort than flipping around cable TV.When left alone, I settle on Dog the Bounty Hunter and Parking Wars on A&E. For the record, my all-time favorite bounty hunters on TV were the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21512185.post-27514419089908800432008-11-30T12:39:00.004-06:002008-11-30T12:57:15.515-06:00The death of the in-store paging systemA few months ago, I had the dubious pleasure of attending the Red Bull Flugtag here in Chicago.That was about three different flavors of crazy, largely because of the armies of people who worship at the altar of Red Bull. Honestly, I had no idea these people existed.While I went to see people crash gigantic pinatas into the lake, others came because they love Red Bull more than the family dog. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0