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Mr. T Diabetes Fundraiser
Chris Mischler, a dude in my high school class and whom I attended UW-Eau Claire with, is raising money for diabetes research. It’s a good cause, and he’s gone to some amazing lengths to accomplish his goals…
“A month ago, I had a full head of hair, no beard, no piercings, and no tattoos. I challenged my friends, family and coworkers to raise money for diabetes research, and at specified targets, I would make myself look more like Mr. T. They reached all the goals faster than I ever imagined, and pretty much turned a normal guy from Milwaukee into a Mr. T look-alike, albeit much smaller and more pale.”
My family has been ravaged by both cancer and diabetes, so I think this is a good cause. His next goal is a “I pity the fool” tattoo at $2500. Join the cause, join in the fun!
- Chris’s MySpace blog entry
- Firstgiving page (donate here)
- Digg: White guy becoming Mr. T (for a good cause) (donate here)
November 5th, 2008 
Family & Friends 
Tags: challenge, charity, diabetes, friends, fundraising, more... Our guy sucks… Long live our guy!
I find it hillarious how the so-called “alternative media” has appologized for and defended Bush time and time again, yet now that there is an election in progress, they waste no time putting a dagger in his back in favor of changeâ„¢ from the likes of McBushBainCain.
Ehh, it’s all over tomorrow. Then they’ll move on to telling us that we made the wrong choice and that we “deserve who we voted for.” I thought that was proven during the last 8 years…
Here’s hoping Obama makes it to his innauguration before some racist asshat takes him out.
Separate but equal
Wanda and I went to The Henry Ford museum this weekend. Among many very excellent exhibits was one of the African-American civil rights struggle in the United States. We even got to step into the actual bus Rosa Parks took her historic stand in. There was a lot of history at the exhibit, and I enjoyed reading about the details. I found myself comparing the struggle of black people to that of modern-day GLBTs. Please note that I am not suggesting that the injustices that African-Americans suffered are equal to those of GLBTs today. There is no establishment de jure of capital punishment for same sex couples, and the idea of public lynchings of GLBTs is absurd.
However, while exploring the history, I couldn’t help but apply modern mores in a similar light. For example, I believe that most individuals would find the Dred Scott verdict to be absurd today. How many of those same individuals are in favor of modifying the state constitution to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman?
While pondering, I pictured many of those conservatives who call into my talk radio programs and suggest things such as, “I don’t care what they do in private, but they shouldn’t be allowed to marry!”
I guess history does repeat itself sometimes.
AT&T U-verse
We got our AT&T U-verse service installed today. It took a couple of hours, but the tech did a good job. We decided to only get the TV service and not the DSL because Wanda’s employer pays for our Internet access through Time Warner. I was sick of maintaining the separate media centers, and getting direct HD content is nice.
It has an amazingly clear picture (even with SD channels), and I like the menu interface much better than Time Warner’s. A few drawbacks include having to pay for each TV receiver (though that’s standard with other digital providers too), the menu includes channels that we don’t get in our package (so I have to scroll through a lot), and currently we can only watch recorded (DVR) shows on one TV. However, the tech said that by the end of the month, AT&T should be rolling out the “Home DVR” service, which lets you watch recorded shows on all TVs (it’s a simple software update).
One cool feature that we won’t get unless we sign up for DSL is the ability to record shows remotely. That would be cool, but it’s hard to complain about free broadband.
The technician was from Milwaukee. He said they’ve been busy lately due to the dispute between our local Fox affiliate and Time Warner (that means no Fox on Time Warner). He said AT&T was bring people in from other regions so they could keep up with demand. We didn’t switch because of the Fox thing, though. I wanted a maintenance-free, quality solution, and I didn’t like Time Warner’s DVR interface. AT&T’s interface is very decent (albeit a little slow). It’s based on Windows, so getting used to it was pretty easy because it’s very similar to Media Center.
Boating with the dogs
We took the dogs boating for the first time yesterday. They seemed to like it. It was cold, though, and Ollie doesn’t have a high tolerance for being cold (dipping him in the water probably didn’t help). Penny sat calmly on the deck.
Pasta Concoction
I was in the mood for spaghetti today and Wanda okayed the idea. I had most of the stuff for spaghetti, but I didn’t feel like thawing chicken*. I wanted meat in it, so I decided to go to Festival Foods to pick up some Italian sausage. While there, Wanda called me and asked if we could put peppers and other vegetables in it. She also wanted healthier noodles.
I went to produce and picked up a red pepper, some Anaheim peppers, a small zucchini, a yellow onion, and a handful of spinach. I also picked up some canned mushrooms, Barilla Plus rotini noodles and about a pound of mild Italian sausage.
First I cooked the sausage, chopped up, and set aside. Next, I sautéed the sliced-up veggies in olive oil until they were tender in my Dutch oven (adding the spinach about 5 minutes before the rest were done). I then poured the spaghetti sauce (26oz can of Hunt’s Garlic & Herb) into the pan and combined a suitable amount of meat and the veggie mixture. I also added about 6 cloves of minced garlic, stirred it up, and let it simmer while the noodles were cooking.
We put a layer of noodles on a plate, then added some Mexican shredded cheese (don’t ask why, we like it) and then topped with the sauce. It turned out to be very delicious!
Charlie Gibson Interviews Palin
To anyone still thinking about voting for McCain, I’d like you to read these excepts from ABC’s Charlie Gibson’s interview with Sarah Palin:
Folders for Gmail
I’ve been using Gmail more and more for various reasons. Most significantly, Gmail offers IMAP for free, which allows me to check my mail in Thunderbird. Generally, I’ve preferred Yahoo as a free e-mail service. One of the things about Gmail that bugged me is the lack of support for folders (at least in the traditional sense, not labels). I found a cool GreaseMonkey script that uses some JavaScript trickery to convert labels to a folder-like treeview in Gmail. It only works in Firefox with GreaseMonkey installed, but it works pretty well.
Maybe now I finally have a good reason to move away from 1and1′s e-mail service. My only head-scratcher is that some of my mail being sent through Gmail’s SMTP is being marked as SPAM. I’ll have to look into that further – it may be because I’m using a different “reply-to” address through Gmail’s SMTP, which some SPAM filters may flag.
- Folders4Gmail at userscripts.org
American Idols Live
We went to the American Idols Live Tour last night at the Resch Center with Wanda, my mom, and my mom’s friend. David Cook and Michael Johns rocked the place – they put on a great show. I also liked Carly Smithson, Brooke White, and David Archuleta. It was a pretty good show, although I was hoping for more performances where they were performing together instead of individually.
Traffic was surprisingly smooth around the stadium. I wish I would have been at the Oneida Casino Monday night – they were there playing the games. 
The Dark Knight
Wanda and I finally went to see The Dark Knight tonight. The Batman films aren’t usually Wanda’s favorite kind of movies, but she wanted to see it because of Heath Ledger. As everyone said, he did an amazing performance. I liked the movie a lot – it was different from the other Batman movies, which was cool. I thought Christian Bale played a decent Batman, although I’m not sure about the raspy “in-suit” voice – perhaps that was part of his clever disguise. The movie was a little violent for kids, but I guess that’s why it’s PG-13.
I also saw a preview for the next Bond movie, Quantum of Solace. It looks like it should be good.
R.I.P. Heath Ledger
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