Corporations must be thrilled with the coming generations who seem to be willing to just lie down and be walked all over. As an example, the last graph of a story about Amazon.com, deleting legally purchased Orwell books and DRM in the NYTimes:

“I’d like to live in a perfect world where I own this content and can do whatever I want with it,” said Justin Gawronski, a high school student whose copy of “1984” was erased by Amazon, but who recently declined when a lawyer asked him to join a class-action lawsuit over the incident. Mr. Gawronski said, “This is probably going to happen again and we just have to learn to live with it.”

Just roll over and give up. It’s just that easy in the Information Age. And won’t those in power be happy with that!

via Amazon Faces a Fight Over Its E-Books – NYTimes.com.

No, I don’t text while I drive. I’m too dumb to do that, and so is my old clamshell phone that barely texts while I sit. However, were I to text while I drive, I now know that I’d be dead if I did thanks to a game on the NYTimes that guages what happens to your reaction time when you text and drive. It accompanies an article about how people and lawmakers ignore the fact that driving and texting or talking on the phone is really dangerous.

Anyway, this is not meant as a PSA or as me telling you what to do. I just thought my results were really interesting. The game was hard, even the second time. If you take it, tell me how you did. I’d be curious how good (or not) my readers are at this kind of thing. Good luck and, let’s be safe out there.

It’s height of the gardening season here in the Pacific Northwest. Now, I am no master gardner. Not by a long shot. But my best friend Dayna happens to be a botanist and a very talented gardner. Last year, for instance, she grew about a million sun gold tomatoes that had so much flavor, it tasted like the sun was turned into candy and then exploded in your mouth. Unfortunately Dayna tends to be a busy person and she gets kind of stressed out by the work of gardening. So this year, I told her that in exchange for gardening lessons and some of the crops, I’d be her garden helper.

While Dayna is off on vacation in Maui for 2.5 weeks, I am in charge of keeping the garden going. Along with this week’s ongoing harvest of snow and snap peas, delicious strawberries and raspberries and some kale, today’s harvest was of massive amounts of arugula and bok choi. So much that I don’t really know what I’ll do with it all.

The best part of today’s work though turned out to be transplanting the carrots which needed to be thinned out to 3″-5″ apart. Dayna’s instructions were to very carefully dig the dirt away from the carrot tops and gently pull them up to re-plant them. What was so neat about this is that one doesn’t generally get to see root crops like onion, garlic, potato and carrot growing cause they’re buried in the ground. When I gently pulled up the carrots, I was amazed to see that even at this very young age (maybe 5 weeks since they were planted, they already look like carrots. Just really teeny, tiny ones.

just for a sense of perspective.

It’s a week late, but not a dollar short, I assure you.

Last weekend, Ilsa, Paul and I rode our bikes down to Artopia/Georgetown Music Fest in Georgetown, the current hippest neighborhood in all of Seattle. The art, for the most part was somewhat uninspiring. For example, this block of melting ice.

uh-huh.

There were also men made of stones.

I thought the best art of the day was the setting. Georgetown is an old industrial area of Seattle, sitting at the North end of the Boeing Field runway. It’s full of large old warehouses, brick buildings and little nooks and crannies of streets that tend to end at freeway walls, train tracks and, well, the runway. It’s a place with the kind of history that you don’t see much of in Seattle. Makes for some really cool, dramatic-looking pictures.

I did get a bit goofy with the edits here.

Oh, and there was the Star Wars van.

Best of all though was the Hazard Factory Power Tool Races. Yes, it is what it sounds like. People take power tools such as saws, belt sanders, drills and anything else with a motor that run without human contact could cause some serious damage and run them down a wooden track in races, into things and into each other. I’ve seen these guys once before and they are a blast.

This year, I saw them send various power tools down a track to smash buckets of paint into a canvas in honor of artopia. Then they played power tool skee ball and finally held a demolition derby. Here’s the two good clips of video I could get through the crowd. Really an impressive show.

To what do you owe this pleasure? Nudging that this time it’s coming from someone other than Zeke. That’s right! I now have at least three readers! Wa-Who! Yes, it’s true. We need to welcome Don, one of the wonderful people I met while in Alabama, to the fold. I know you all will like him because he does not hesitate to let me know when I should be posting here. Keep up the good work Don, and we’ll all be happier.

Oh, right I was writing a post wasn’t I? I should have pointed this out earlier, but the aforementioned Zeke (AKA Doug) wrote an article about why people abandon blogs for the Times. Sound familiar? It should because I helped inspire that piece. Yes. I inspire the New York Times. Or at least one of its freelancers.

If you’re new to this blog (and I know some of you are), you’ve just learned the hardest lesson about keeping up with me here: I’m not good at putting things up on a regular basis. But I generally do get there. I promise. Just keep my RSS feed in your reader and you will be rewarded with bursts of creativity, days of posts and even pictures from time to time.

Speaking of pictures from time to time, here’s my vacation pictures from my annual trip to the deep south for the Annual McBride Crawfish Boil. This year it was just me making the trip down South as my traveling companions from last year were busy with various and sundry activities like work and having a 2-week old baby. Next year, we all plan to return with a few extra folks in tow as well.

Alabama 2009

It was a great time regardless, especially because I got to spend so much quality time with my sisters Nina and Lisa. Although we didn’t grow up with each other (they’re older and from other parental combinations than me) we’ve become pretty close in adulthood and definitely have a tight bond that feels great to renew at least annually. I also had the opportunity to re-connect with some of my more spread out family, start talking about a giant family ski trip next year and to meet some really extended family in the form of by brother in law’s immediate families. I know there’s no blood relations there, but when your sister marries someone as amazing as Mike McBride, it’s pretty apparent that his family is also going to be full of good people and you’d be nuts not to call them family too.

Speaking of family, it’s time to head to my father in law’s to celebrate father’s day. Strange to now have to celebrate this holiday every year after never being able to earlier in life.

This is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a long time. Some might think being a receptionist isn’t much of a gig, but being this receptionist would be pretty goddam cool. Check out Rotus: Receptionist of the United States at The New York Times.

A few weeks ago a few friends and I went up to Lopez Island in the San Juans for the annual Tour de Lopez. A 31-mile ride around this relatively flat and very beautiful island.

Here are some pictures.

This is a refreshing breath of fresh air. According to the LA Times, a student in Utah bid on oil leases he couldn’t buy to run up their prices. Apparently, he was sick of the government selling leases to land in his state for oil exploration and extraction so he turned to a tried-and-true method to attack the problem: civil disobedience.

A college student was charged with two federal felonies Wednesday for what he contends were acts of civil disobedience — making false bids to run up auction prices on oil and gas parcels on public land near Utah’s national parks.

How great. How inventive. Yeah, this could cause some serious issues if everyone does it, sometimes, serious issues with normal operating procedure are what’s needed. For example, Birmingham, AL circa 1955.

It seems the guy isn’t the only one with a problem with these leases either:

Weeks later, new Interior Secretary Ken Salazar rescinded 77 of the leases, saying they were too close to national parks and never should have gone up for sale under the Bush administration.

But the real kicker is the end result of his actions:

“Tim DeChristopher is a guy who walked in the auction without a penny and cost our company $600,000,” Gunnell said.

via Student is charged with obstructing Utah land auction – Los Angeles Times.

Iowa”s supreme court says gay marriage ban is unconstitutional! Iowa. Who knew? via Iowa Court Voids Gay Marriage Ban – NYTimes.com.

The best part is that the decision expressly says what I have thought about this stupid fight for years, that civil marriage has absolutely nothing to do with religious beliefs.

The justices said marriage was a “civil contract” and should not affect religious doctrine or views.

“The only difference is civil marriage will now take on a new meaning that reflects a more complete understanding of equal protection of the law,” the justices wrote.

I your church doesn’t want to allow gay people to marry, fine. But nothing gives your church the right to keep an entire class of people from marrying.