Wait for it.

h/t ecogeek

I spent the day playing Urban Golf Saturday, thanks to the wonderful organizers of Seattle Urban Golf. Urban golf is exactly what you think: Nine holes played in the urban core of the city. We use real golf clubs and spongy balls (to save car windows). Playing in the middle of the city means a lot more obstacles than on a normal course. So while at first glance nine holes of golf probably isn’t a big deal to most, they all run down the alleys, side streets, parking lots and garages making the course a bit harder than you think. Oh, did I mention that after each hole all the players stop for a drink at a bar? Things get pretty ridiculous pretty fast.

The day started at 2 pm with a troupe of 50 or so golfers in our best duds at Cal Anderson Park. It was the day’s only hole played on grass (the rest was pavement and gravel). The short par 3 (or 10 depending on who was scoring), was quickly followed by our first drink at Purr. It was the afternoon’s last sedate affair. From there, we ambled to the the parking lot of the now-closed KFC. This hole was followed by a team shot of tequila at King Cobra (where they were playing Caddyshack on the TVs–a nice touch).

After a shot of tequila, things get a bit hazy, so a hole-by-hole, bar-by-bar report of the rest of the day is impossible. Beyond a number of excellent Bloody Marys and being impressed at the amount of short, tight and extravagant golf wear Seattleites can pull out of their closets, I remember only a few stops during the afternoon.

There was a drink and a handful of hummus at The Garage and a mojito at The Rosebud (where one woman became enamored with my wife’s ass for a while, a development I did not mind). Drinks were also consumed at R-Place, after a quick on-the-sly slice of pizza at Hot Mama’s, which didn’t do enough to sober either of us up for the dreaded community college parking lot garage hole. The day ended, 7 hours later at Maharaja; an Indian restaurant with an awesome happy hour menu and dollar appetizers.

We watched The Breakfast Club last night. None of us could remember when the last we saw it was, but, as is probably the case with you, we’ve both seen it more times that we could count. I’m not entirely sure why it ended up on our Netflix queue, but we both felt it was time to re-visit our version of the classic high school drama.
True. But I didn’t expect it to be. I mean, I figured all that shit out year’s ago.

At the end of the movie, I posed the same question I have always had about it: What does its name mean? Penny, Bradley and Alexis all said, “They got there in time for breakfast,” which is the same answer that people have given for years and never rang true for me. They don’t eat breakfast there and more importantly, the begining of the day was not the part any of them would want to remember. They didn’t like each other then, didn’t trust each other and weren’t happy to be where they were. So I asked for better responses.

Penny decided that they were breaking fast with their preconceived notions which is great for on the spot, quick thinking, but a little too deep for a John Hughes’ movie. Bradley said that it was the same year that Supertramp released Breakfast in America, but that’s not actually true (the album was from 1979, the movie from 1984). Alexis thought maybe Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions came out that year, but not so much (1973). So still, I am left with my explanation, which I’ve held on to for years.

I think that the conversation about “What’s going to happen to us on Monday? Are we still going to be friends” gets re-addressed  by the characters off camera and they decide that the only way they can be friends or see each other and still manage the day-to-day hell if high school is to see each other at or around breakfast. Brian (Anthony Michael Hall) being the geek that he is, gives the group a name in the paper (it’s not necessarily shared with the others): The Breakfast Club.

What do you think? Great trivia is available, but I have yet to find a definitive answer as to why it is called The Breakfast Club?

As Zeke pointed out below, “green” trade shows are not the only ones that produce amazing amounts of waste. Though, as I said before, it’s still kind of shocking how much the “green” ones do produce.

Apparently there’s at least one company that’s working to make the trade-show industry a bit more sustainable. According to Sustainable Industries, where I write too:

Eco-Systems builds its portable-modular exhibits using bamboo plywood,
low-VOC stains and finishes, LED lighting, and polyester fiber made
from recycled soda bottles. Eco-Systems also offers an internal
recycling service called Reincarnation, which collects retired exhibit
materials for use in new displays. The company’s shipping cases are
also made from recycled materials.

That’s pretty great. Unfortunately, their products come at a premium price, but the cost is dropping. Hopefully it’ll come inline with the cost of standard display booths soon.

This is awesome in so many ways. Via Marketplace (yes, I am obsessed), a tale of an espresso customer in DC who ordered three shots of espresso over ice and was refused because it’s against shop policy to sell that drink.

And, you know it’s coming, the customer and the Murky Coffee shop owner both have blogs where they’ve written about it. The volleys from customer and owner are pretty amusing. I gotta say that I love the tip the guy left and would like to point out that the reason for not serving the drink as a matter of policy (” Pouring espresso over ice creates unpleasantly acrid flavors.”) doesn’t ring entirely true since they also give a second, “more mundane” reason:

More than half of the customers who we gave “iced espresso” to (back before our now infamous policy) would take that cup to the condiment bar and pour 8-14 ounces of milk out of the dairy pitcher…

Uh-huh. So you used to serve espresso this way, but decided that it doesn’t taste right and oh, people also turn it into a “ghetto latte” regularly. Seems like they’re using the taste thing to justify an unpopular policy to me. When I used to drink doppios on ice (two shots over ice) I never noticed “unpleasantly acrid flavors.”

I do appreciate the owner’s feelings about customers being right though. I have a long-standing dream to open my own coffee shop. When I do, I plan to have a sign on the register warning people that if they’re going to act like dicks to us, they’re going to get it right back.
Anyway, the posts are pretty amusing.

Ok. So you know me. I’m a “greenie” or an “enviro” or a “Hippie Tree Hugger.” Whatever you call it, you know what I mean: I care about the environment and espouse that view most any chance I get and love to show off the impact “green” living can have.

But as a journalist, I also need to show when the best of the best aren’t actually so good.

To whit, the U.S. Green Building Council 2007 conference generated tons of waste:

How much trash does a “green” event produce? Evidently, a lot if you’re
the U.S. Green Building Council’s GreenBuild 2007. The annual
conference, held in Chicago last year, created 44 tons of waste.

Not such a good metric for a “green” event, is it? Not even when you consider that 40 of those tons of waste were diverted from landfills, as the DJC Green Building Blog also noted. That’s nice and all, but as the post points out, and the CEO of CleanScapes told me yesterday in an interview, it’s still wasteful even if it’s recycled or composted. Seriously, did all of that waste need to be generated in the first place? So much of what is created and used is not necessary. Even if it is recycled or composted, when you get rid of it, it’s still wasting resources such as energy and the materials.

We all need to change and we all need to be continually improving. As someone who works for Boeing that I interviewed today said, “It’s not enough to just be compliant anymore. We need continual improvement. That’s an excellent standard.”

Google, as well all know, has a motto that makes it seem like the good guy next door: “Do No Evil.” But when one looks at their business model–based as it is in collecting as much information about its users as possible–it’s easy to come to the conclusion that even if they have yet to do something evil with it all, one day, someone will be tempted. Even more worrying is that our government–with the new FISA law, National Security Letters and the PATRIOT Act as evidence–seems to have a motto of “Do A lot of Evil,.” And it can force Google to give up all that information without you or me ever knowing.

All of which makes me think that maybe using Google for my email, my web searches, my web site user tracking, my rss feeds and all the other services of theirs that I use is maybe not such a good idea. Enter one of my favorite radio shows, On the Media, and a piece about Google from last week’s show. During the piece, a plug-in for Firefox called TrackMe Not is mentioned. It’s a handy piece of software which sends Google a burst of fake searches each time you send your own search so Google never knows what it is you are searching for and what the program is searching for.

TrackMe Not doesn’t fix all the possible security lapses one encounters by using Google, and to be honest, they do such a good job that I am not likely to give up my gmail account or any of my other accounts with them, but this one bit of obfuscation is a nice tool to be using.

In other Google news, the next piece on the same OTM show was about the out of court settlement reached in the Pensacola obscenity case I wrote about. There’s some interesting angles to the argument brought up during the interview.

I took the image from grokdotcom.

We got to talking about The Far Side at work today because Henrik was admonishing his dog about something and I referenced the Far Side “What we say to dogs, What they hear” cartoon. Being from Denmark, he wasn’t all that familiar with Gary Larson. While searching for the image, I came across this one, which always makes me laugh. I thought I’d post it just to bug you Zeke.

The story for those of you who are not Zeke, is that in college, Zeke had a mug with this cartoon on it (still does, last I checked) that always bugged me (still does too). You see, I just don’t get the choice here. The guy should just choose the door on the right because it’s labeled “Dammed if you don’t.” In other words, you’re dammed if you don’t choose that door while you ARE dammed if you choose the other one. That’s what the doors say anyway. And the caption bears this out. The guy can’t be dammed if he makes a choice or doesn’t, as Zeke contends, because the devil is forcing him to choose.

Seems pretty simple to me.

I love The Onion.

Who would have thought that pool reports of lavish fund raising dinners for presidential campaigns (which I imagine are themselves tedious in the extreme) could be so entertaining?

There are oaks and Chestnut trees and then there’s the house, with four
Ionic columns and a slate roof and 17 windows across the front and the
Rockefellers apparently suffer no critical shortage of guest bedrooms.
It is a useful reminder that before the Gates and Bloomberg and Warren
B., there was old man John D. Rockefeller, who bequeathed successive
generations of descendants a truly astonishing boodle of money.

But I digress. The fundraiser was standard issue, if it’s Tuesday night
aren’t we dropping $28,500 per to dine with Barack? Your faithful
scribes sat outside in an air-conditioned van whilst drinks were
sipped. Then a staffer led us to an ante-room, where we noticed “The
Reclining Bather” by Pablo Picasso. Just a thought, but I’d place a
mid-two figures wager it was not a print.

Read more of last night’s pool report from the Obama fundraiser at the Rockerfeller’s and enjoy.

(via)