Best laid plans

Okay, so the weekend has turned out the way I planned in regards to blogging. I have excuses, but I'll spare everyone. Tonight there will be some content. Monday is iffy as our softball league is scheduled to begin, but things are looking soggy. Tuesday & Wednesday, don't even bother stopping by. Honestly. Wednesday is the third wedding anniversary of the lovely Mrs. Jib and I, and we will be in Chicago on Tuesday and Wednesday to see Wicked and some of the sights. Blogging will be non-existant. If I have any readers left after the miserable last week or two that I've turned out, I'll be back to chat with all of you on Thursday.

A.J. Hawk, et al

The Packers chose A.J. Hawk with the 1st round draft choice, number five overall. I'm pleased with the pick as Hawk was the guy I wanted them to pick from the get go. In the last week, they've made strides in solidifying their defense, and this was the cherry on top.

After the Hawk pick, I was lost, though. I watched and watched and watched, waiting for the Walker trade. Ultimately, they didn't get much for him. As it stands right now, with plenty of draft left, the Packers will have a moderately solid defense next year, and squat for offense. Walker had to go, and the Pack was hardly in a strong position, but this offense is looking like it will be noticeably weaker than last year's team. Yeah, they can pick up another receiver in the later rounds, but it probably won't be anyone who can make an impact. With rumors that Donald Driver is throwing a hissy fit now, too, Favre's (likely) swan song is going to be very out of key.

Europe, in a nutshell

If a historian in 2234 started flipping back through today's news to see what Europe was like in 2006, this is what he or she'd find:

An Italian restaurant was fined 688 euros ($855) for displaying live lobsters on ice to attract patrons, in an innovative application of an anti-cruelty law usually affecting to household pets.

It's hard to take the continent seriously as an ally sometimes when they are fining restaurants for displaying on ice lobsters which will be boiled alive.

A good day

I really want to apologize for the complete lack of attention that I've given to Jiblog this week. Things will pick back up here over the weekend, and then on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week I'll be incommunicado again.

In other news, I'd like to thank Clint and USC Trojan for their input on my car bleg. We wrapped that up today, and we ended up going with a midnight blue, 6 cylinder 2005 Dodge Stratus SXT. I do loathe the car buying process, mostly because I dislike playing salespeople off of each other, but we got a good price on the car. They even took my old Dodge Neon off my hands, a car that had 136,000 miles on it, an air conditioner that didn't work anymore, and a passenger side window that didn't work, either.

It was like Christmas in April for the lovely Mrs. Jib. She got a PDA today, too.

Today's must read, 4/27/06

Learn something new about Israel and Arabs. Read this post from Michael Totten. Here's a sample:

It made sense once I thought about it. Bedouin may be Egyptian Arabs, but they are completely isolated from Hosni Mubarak’s deranged state-run media. They could not care less about the politics of the so-called Arab-Israeli conflict. No one ever told them they are supposed to hate Jews. When politics can be pitched over the side, Israeli Jews and at least some Arab Muslims have a natural affinity for one another and they get along great.

Read the rest. It really is an excellent post.

WTMJ Podcasts

I am very pleased with Milwaukee's 620 WTMJ. They've really jumped on the podcasting thing, even having a portion of their website devoted to it. I don't get to listen to Sykes and Wagner as much as I'd like, and I had always wished they'd put more audio content up on the web. Now they're doing it. If they ever expand more and put Sykes & Wagner content behind a subscription wall, I'll likely be ponying up for it.

I may finally have to break down and buy an iPod after all.

755. It ain't no 56 or .400

The baseball of my youth was a beautiful game of rock solid numbers. 61, 715, 755, 300, 500, 3000, etc. That started to erode in 1989. 4,191 had fallen, and with it fell the man who broke the all time hits record. When Pete Rose was banned from baseball, the all time hits record became the unspoken record of baseball. In 1998, 61 fell to Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. We all cheered it then because we didn't quite grasp yet what Mark and Sammy injected themselves with to get there. Bonds followed, breaking McGwire's single season home run record, and now those numbers are meaningless, too. Last night, Bonds hit his 711th career home run. Soon enough, he will pass Hank Aaron and establish a new number for baseball lore, but like the single season home run record and the career hits record, the number will be stripped of any meaning. We will be left with two batting records that have meaning, numbers which controversy can only do so much to tarnish, and those numbers are 56 and .400.

United Nations' stamp collection missing

Some things are just too rich to parody:

Amid the many scandals at the United Nations, a new mystery now looms. What happened to the world organization’s unique and valuable postal archive — in effect, the U.N.’s own stamp collection, one of the crown jewels of its past and a popular point of contact with the global public?

Word on the street is that the Boutros Boutros-Ghali rare belly button lint collection and the Kofi Anan credibility collection are also missing.

I hate the car buying process

I just thought I'd get that out of the way.

Iowa-Wisconsin mumps outbreak

I've been unconcerned about this region's mumps outbreak. I know that when I was little, I had the measles/mumps/reubella vaccination, but I don't know if I was actually immunized against mumps because I can remember either mumps or ruebella having been crossed off on the little sheet. Still, I've continued merrily on my way, unconcerned about mumps even if it turns out that I'm not immunized. Until I read this paragraph in a story about mumps:

Mumps is spread by coughing and sneezing. The most common symptoms are fever, headache and swollen salivary glands under the jaw. It can lead to more severe problems, such as hearing loss, meningitis and swollen testicles, which can lead to infertility. It does not respond to antibiotics.

Italics mine. I'm paying attention now. Nobody told me about that problem. I'll take two meningitis, please, just keep the elephantitis of the beanbag away, thank you very much.

Monday Monday

April 25, 1976

Snow Job

I just wanted to use that headline before the angry, anti-Bush press corps did. Tony Snow will be the next White House Press Secretary. I like Snow and I'm looking forward to see how he handles the White House press corps.

Blogging lulls

James Wigderson tonight notes that I Am The Force has gone on hiatus. These things seem to happen in waves during periods of time where there seems to be a lull in blog worthy topics. You'll see several bloggers go on hiatus or quit around the same time. It is easy to understand why. Blogging is very enjoyable, but I think everyone goes through periods where the rewards don't seem as high and writing new material seems to take more effort than normal. When your writing isn't done to pay the bills, this matters tremendously. It is during those times that it is easy to have second thoughts about blogging altogether. There is something to be said about slogging through those times, though. You usually snap out of them rather suddenly, and just as suddenly the rewards of blogging seem brighter than ever.

This is not to say that this is why I Am The Force took some time off. I don't know why he took off-it could be that his personal life is crazy right now. Still, it wouldn't surprise me to see some other bloggers take some time off or quit in the near future. I'd still recommend to anyone that is thinking about doing so to stick with it, though.

Brett's coming back

I never imagined I'd be so blase over this news:

The NFL's only three-time MVP and long-time quarterback of the Green Bay Packers will return for a 16th season, ESPN.com reported Tuesday night.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad he's coming back, if only because the goodbye tour may be the only thing to make this season worth watching. Just the same, the longer Brett held off in making a decision the more convinced I became that he no longer has the drive nor the desire to prove anything. I was actually ready to see what Aaron Rodgers will bring to the table.

Hysteria in D.C.

Ugh. If I wasn't so fed up with it, I might actually be angry about the oil hysteria in Washington D.C. Politicians are feeding the hysteria about gas and oil prices (see: Chuck Schumer) in order to try to use them to score political points. Speculative fears+rising demand+relatively static oil production+SIGNIFICANT GOVERNMENT REGULATION & TAXATION=high gas and oil prices. If there was one politician in Washington who was as concerned about gas and oil prices as they claim to be, then they would start by loosening up government regulation and gas taxes. Right now all they are is hypocrites and part of the problem. What scares me is that they are a part of the problem that can make the situation worse.

Additional
One more thing. All on its own, sometime around Memorial Day, gas prices will drop back down to the mid $2 range, lower if the ethanol industry can keep up, and it will stabilize there (barring unforseen circumstances). Just watch.

Next up: Coal shortage

Coal is one of the most abundant energy sources available to us. So those coal powered electicity plants should have no problem pumping out the megawats this summer, right? Not so fast.

Electric utilities are worried they might not be able to obtain enough coal this summer to power the country's air conditioners if railroads have to scramble to untangle the logistics of oil refineries making the switch to a cleaner gasoline additive.

"With the peak summer season for electricity approaching and rail deliveries of coal still not where we would like them to be, we are monitoring this situation carefully," said Jim Owen, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, a trade association representing shareholder-owned electric companies.

Energy prices are high right now, and most of the attention is on increased demand and on instability or potential instability in some oil producing nations. What is ignored is that it doesn't have to be quite this bad. The fact of the matter is we face some serious capacity issues in this country. We could use more refineries, but we don't have them. We could drill more oil sources domestically, but we don't. We could use more trains and track to ship goods and energy supplies, but we won't build them. Things like this, plus attendent government regulations, are putting an artificial cap on domestic supplies of energy sources.

Good news, coffee lovers

Grab the biggest mug ya got and keep that life sustaining black liquid flowing:

Go ahead and have that second cup of coffee -- or third, or fourth. A study published on Monday shows heavy, long-term coffee drinking does not raise the risk of heart disease for most people.

That's news that I'm pleased to hear, as I drink way more coffee than I should during the day. Still, it does come with a caveat.

Heavy coffee drinkers did tend to smoke and drink alcohol more often and those two factors clearly do raise heart risk, the researchers report in the journal Circulation.

I anxiously await the study that says that drinking Leinie's will make you younger, healthier, and more vivacious.

Bush to investigate environmentalists and NIMBY's on high gas prices

(UPI-Washington) President George W. Bush today announced a federal investigation into whether pressures from environmentalists and Not-In-My-Backyarders (NIMBYs) are partially responsible for high oil and gas prices.

In his announcement, the President referred to possible heavy handed pressure from environmentalists that has prevented domestic oil exploration off American shores and in Alaska. He also noted that it is rumored that many wealthy property owners support cheap oil, as long as it isn't looked for, produced, piped, or refined anywhere near their property, leaving 20 acres in Utah available for energy production.

Unnamed administration sources say that the investigation may expand to the Environmental Protection Agency, which may have conspired to drive up oil and gas costs through onerous regulation of oil production, refineries, and gas usage, unnecessarily restricting supply and adding costs to the price of oil and gasoline.

(What you have just read is a test of the emergency satire system. This was only a test.)

Enter stage left

Now that Blogger is supposedly working, I feel like I should be tap dancing out onto the stage that is this blog, with some upbeat piano music playing me in and my top hat waving in my hand.

Hello my darlin', hello my darlin', hello my Clementine...

On second thought, nobody really wants to see me sing and dance.

...exit stage right

Apologies

I apologize for the radio silence here.  I’ve been experiencing some difficulties with the site for the last 15 hours or so.  I’m not sure how wide spread the problem has been, but it looks like something has been resolved.