November 20, 2005
A new photoset over at my on-line photo gallery, these from a potluck followed by an evening of singing at JJ, Woody, Anna & Alan’s house in Guelph.
Lots of toddler photos.
November 20, 2005
Browsing my blog subscriptions rather than working, I came across a thread on MeFi asking for suggestions for the most annoying MP3 ringtone. There are a number of good suggestions, but these are my favourites so far:
The person responsible for the Chicken Yodel is none other than Kerry Christensen who, according to his website is an alpine and western master yodeler. The master yodeler part has to be true because it’s his URL. So, I poked around the website a bit and found out more about Mr. Christensen. It seems as though Kerry has managed to carve enough of a niche out for himself that he is one of the "few" full-time yodelers in the US today.
What does one do as a full time yodeler, you ask? Well it looks like you travel to a lot of RV parks to perform. For example, if you’re in Mesa, Arizona the coming February 2nd, you can catch Mr. Christensen at the Mesa Spirit RV Resort (which seems like a pretty special place in and of itself–9 miles of paved streets!). Or you could travel on a cruise with him to the Caribbean or up the Rhine river.
Some other career highlights:
- 1977: standing ovation at his first public yodeling, held at Brigham Young University orientation assembly
- 1984: began working at the German pavilion at Epcot Center, Disney World
- Unspecified dates: cruise ships to Alaska, Panama and the Caribbean
Now, I do want to share the fact that I do have a soft spot for yodeling and the Germanic arts in general (especially Polka), so it’s with a bit of jealousy that I came across Mr. Christensen’s recordings. Not only is Kerry an accomplished yodeler, but he’s what is called an Austrian double-threat, playing the Zither too.
It’s enough to get me to visit Arizona this winter.
November 18, 2005
I was at a Future Shop today picking up some pictures (the first time I’ve had Future Shop print my digi pics, BTW) and I came across a XBox 360 at the store. I just saw it in passing (wowzas, but don’t buy one until you have an HDTV), but the best thing about the whole experience were the three uber-geeks that were glued to the thing for the duration of my visit.
These guys were about as stereotypical as you could get for gaming nerds: long stringy hair, baseball caps, chubby, unkempt facial hair. I can only imagine how many of these guys are coming out of the woodwork to come and gawk at the 360. Not quite the viral marketing that Microsoft had in mind, me thinks.
November 18, 2005
I’m happy to report that I purchased my first Christmas gift today. This means I’ll likely sit on my laurels, happy in the post-shopping glow of accomplishment until December 23rd.
November 17, 2005
So, I’ve managed to get my head around PHP and WordPress enough that I have a site design that I’m pretty happy with. I especially like the sidebar information and it’s ability to update without too much work. Much more interactive!
November 16, 2005
I’ve just posted a new gallery from a walk Katie, Heather, Lee and I took last weekend. Some nice photos of all of us.
November 16, 2005
So, through a domino effect, it looks like Katie is going to be moving in with Lee within the next four months. This means for me, at the very least, my current living situation will be changing. Right now, there seems to be quite a bit up in the air (dates, where they’ll be moving, what I’m going to do…) but given the fact that this news is pretty new, these things should be cleared up in the coming days.
Update: Looks like February 1st is the move-out day.
November 9, 2005
I’ve just added a “status” section to the sidebar. Right now, it’s adding recently listened-to music. We’ll see what else gets added.
In a perfect world, I would like to have a three column set-up for the page, with my personal status information on the left, posts in the middle and the blog stuff on the right. I’m no PHP or CSS expert, so I’ll guess I’ll have to settle on this comprimise as I tinker around.
