The T3sk3y Defenestrator

This is post #400.  It’s amazing looking back that the Defenestrator made it this far.  Whether it makes it beyond post #400 remains to be seen.

I’m going to talk for a bit about the value of focus.  Since the start of the Defenestrator, the focus has been simple – whatever is interesting to me.  The only forbidden topic is politics – which isn’t interesting to me.  Major exemptions were granted for elections and tax days, but that’s it.

The problem is that it was always kind of easy to find topics since there was no focus.  The downside is that it was sort of everything to some people – and nothing to most people.  My photography friends don’t care about pinball.  My pinball friends don’t care about my travel adventures.  My family doesn’t care about either photography or pinball.  Well, they do – but not enough to go to my blog every day.  When you know nobody’s reading – it’s tough to stay motivated to post!

Back in November I decided to focus.  I launched a new blog over at T3imagery.com to be tightly focused on being a photo blog.  The idea is simple – one photo per day, every day.  This gave me the opportunity to showcase my favorite pictures and tell a little story about them.  That way, people that are interested in that topic will continue to find interesting stuff every day.

The results?  Three months in, I’ve found it to be really rewarding.  I’ve had a nice boost in hits due to cross promotion on Facebook and Twitter.  And – in the thing that means the most – I’ve had more nice comments from people in three months than I got in five years of the Defenestrator.  It’s also challenging me to create content – one picture per day eats up your good stuff really fast!

So, what now for the Defenestrator?  I’m certainly going to keep the lights on.  It’s minimal effort to keep things running.  Honestly, it’ll probably continue to be a little more sporadic in that I’ll only create content when something blogworthy happens.  I just don’t have time to blog for blogging’s sake.  I’ll still probably post travelogues since that serves as a great way to capture memories for the future.  I’ll also probably continue to show off pinball things since that’s a big chunk of what I do.  I suspect though it’ll never be as rewarding as the focused effort I’ve got going at T3 Imagery.

So – if you lose your way – focus!

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Since we’re talking about Hell on Halloween..

I’m going to briefly break ranks on my pledge to never talk about politics except on April 15th.� Since apparently the frontrunners are allowed to go back on pledges, I’m going to do the same and utter one short statement.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PEOPLE, SAVE YOUR DAMN MONEY AND STOP SENDING ME CRAP AND POLLUTING MY TELEVISION.� I’LL VOTE FOR ANYBODY.. AND I MEAN ANYBODY.. THAT PLEDGES TO CONSTITUTIONALLY LIMIT CAMPAIGNING TO ONE MONTH.

Yep, one month.� That’s it.� If you can’t get your message out in a month – you either don’t really believe in it or you aren’t persuasive enough to win anyway.

Who the heck has been running the country for the past fourteen months, anyway?

Rant off.

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I really hope the Vikings sign this guy right now:

Number Four at Eighteen

Oh, don’t get me wrong.� I hate him as much as any red blooded Vikings fan goes.� Why then am I so excited about having him play for the ‘Queens?

See – it’s like this.� Several years ago – and my wife will vouch for this – I predicted he would end his career with the Vikings.� When I made this rash prediction, I was told in no uncertain terms that I was nuts and that he’d finish his career with the team he led to the Super Bowl.

I disagreed, and explained one simple fact.

All great quarterbacks come to Minnesota to die.

Let’s look at the list:

• Archie Manning
• Jim McMahon
• Randall Cunningham
• Warren Moon
• Jeff George
• Brad Johnson

.. and so forth.

Anyway, I swore it would happen someday – and when it did, all would fall to the ground professing my genius.� Actually, I’m not looking for anything other than acknowledgement of having called it back when nobody would believe me.

Imagine my surprise when the rumors started that he wanted to come out of retirement and perhaps wanted to play for the Vikes.� Of course, it really wasn’t that much of a surprise.. I *knew* it was going to come to pass.

Who is that fella?� It’s Brett Fahvvvv-reh.� Faaaav-rah.� Faaaahhhv-reee.. ah, whatever.

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted a raves posting.. so here are ten things that I’ve run across recently that ROCK (in my opinion):

1) The BlueAnt Z9 Bluetooth headset.� I’ve been through a few headsets.. this one WORKS.� It pairs well, it has good audio quality, and the noise reduction does a good job at filtering out road noise.� It’s really tiny, too – I have to be careful to not put it in a pants pocket and run it through the wash.

2) Survivor: Fans vs. Favorites.� I’ll admit that I’m a sucker for some reality TV – and the season of Survivor that wrapped up last night was one of my favorites yet.� I sure didn’t predict the winner – but I guess I can’t argue with Parvati’s game.� It’s just unfortunate that a couple of my favorites went out early due to injury or treachery (Penner, James, & Ozzy)

3) Good stylii.� I lose about one stylus a month for my phone – so I buy them frequently.� I got stuck with some really crappy ones after my Washington trip and it was hell during the four days it took to lose or break all three.� They really sucked due to bad build (tips fell off, one broke in half) and not fitting – a single flick would send them flying.� I now have good ones with built in pens.

4) The Skyfire mobile browser.� If you’ve EVER tried to use a sports site like foxsports.com or any other big complex page from a mobile browser, you’ll understand this one.� Skyfire preloads the page on the server, then sends a low-res picture to the mobile.� When you zoom, it sends just the chunk you are looking at.� It’s still in closed beta – but it looks promising!

5) Classic Playfield Reproductions and Pinball, Inc. Without these two making playfields, plastics, backglasses, and ramps – restoration would be a lot tougher!

6) Theories that I figured out years ago.�� I’ve always said it would rot to be an activist because you walk around torqued off about something all the time.� That’s a bad way to go through life.� Somebody else agrees with me: The Economist

7) Lemonheads.� Yum.

Adobe Lightroom.� I resisted initially – I’m now a believer.� It’s the shiznit for organizing, managing, and preparing digital photos.

9) The Spring Biking Class at Balance Fitness: I got a six week riding class at Balance Fitness from my wife for my birthday.� No, it’s not spinning.� It’s actually on bikes on trainers indoors.� All I can say is that worked hard enough to nearly vomit six weeks in a row – then I set a personal record (PR) my first ride home from work.� For those interested – 26 miles in 1:24:00.� That’s a full minute faster than my best time.

10) Herald of Leshrac: Stealing land, flying, and growing?� Sign me up!

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As I’ve recapped on every Tax Day for a third consecutive year.. I’ve got one and only one rule on the Defenestrator.

Thou shalt not talk about politics.

So, as to not talk about politics and to keep my own rule, I’m going to let others echo my sentiments about the day. Some are wise, some not so wise, some are just plain colorful – but I agree with all of them on this particular topic.

We use our tax dollars to pay some bureaucrat to kill a mountain lion, dig a hole and bury this precious beast. No one gets to eat it, nobody gets to buy licenses, fees and taxes themselves. And that’s only after a mountain lion has killed somebody! Oh my God! And the Osbournes are still No. 1! – Ted Nugent

The trick is to stop thinking of it as ‘your’ money. -Revenue Auditor

Your federal government needs your money so that it can perform vital services for you that you would not think up yourself in a million years. – Dave Barry (US columnist)

If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year with it in your pockets, and all that don’t get wet you can keep. ~Will Rogers

America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation. ~Laurence J. Peter

Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax cut save you thirty cents? ~Peg Bracken

Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages. ~H.L. Mencken

The nation should have a tax system that looks like someone designed it on purpose. ~William Simon

Did you ever notice that when you put the words “The” and “IRS” together, it spells “THEIRS?” ~Author Unknown

And finally.. to close out this tax day – on which you will still be working for the government for another month – a couple from Ronald Reagan:

We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much. -Ronald Reagan

Millions of individuals making their own decisions in the marketplace will always allocate resources better than any centralized government planning process. -Ronald Reagan

Happy Tax Day, everyone..

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Apparently, somebody has been granted a patent for a small phone that docks inside a PDA.� It’s a great idea – except that it would have been really useful about five years ago.� Now that Smartphones are out, this is sort of past it’s prime.� Still, it would be really nice to have a very small phone when all I want is a phone – and the entire enchilada when I’m in power user mode.

Here’s the catch.� The reason I think it’s a great idea is that I’m going to throw modesty to the wind and take full credit for this one.� I thought of this in about 2000 and failed to act on it back then.

This isn’t the first.� Let’s recap the list of “million dollar ideas” that later turned out to be real products:

1. Caffeinated water – Thought of this in ’91 – by ’93, Water Joe was on the shelves
2. Movie theaters that have double wide ‘cuddle seats’ (also useful for people that enjoy a bit too many jumbo popcorns with extra butter).� Check – most stadium style theaters have some of these.
3. Docking cell phone / PDAs.� Check!

Ah, I just need to act on some of my ideas.� Here is the link to the full story:� Link

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I think a few people in Portugal don’t like Nickleback either.

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After a 6-month hiatus from home improvement due to uh.. ‘family improvement’, I got motivated to tackle another room yesterday. This time it was the downstairs bathroom that was the focus of my attention.

I decided to do a Venetian Plaster faux finish – it’s a really thick ‘goopy’ paint that is smeared on with a trowel – and sort of looks like, uh, well, a plastered wall… in Venice. It’s kind of putzy to do – you smear a little on, then smear it randomly around in short strokes, then repeat for hours. It’s more like frosting a cake than painting a room. After ten hours of fun, I got the first coat on the entire room.

I had one really strong observation during the course of this project..

Nickleback REALLY sucks

Wow, what a lame band. When you listen to 93X for ten hours, you hear a lot of repeats – so this gave me the chance to really gather my thoughts. As if things weren’t bad enough, the album that they played from start to finish at 10:30 was.. NICKLEBACK!

These guys are the Wonder Bread of pop metal. Every song was utterly forgettable – 3:30 of interchangeable fluff. Lyrically they are no better – I’m quite positive they open up the rhyming dictionary and start writing. I can see it now..

What word should we start with? How about.. uh.. TRANCE. Yeah, that’s great. Lemme see here..

A few months ago, somebody else observed how interchangeable their songs are – and went through the effort of overlaying two of those. Amazingly, they were the SAME SONG. No digital trickery was done here other than placing one song in the left channel and one song in the right channel:

Nickleback Sucks

Actually, I should be mad at people for buying this crap rather than the band itself. They might really be geniuses – they make lots of money with no effort.

Hmm.. I can do this.. lemme see..

Sign me up!

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Here is one websites’ opinion on the 50 worst bands of all time. I agree with about 90% of this list and had a good belly laugh out of some of the comments. Here are some of the best:

32 THE HOOTERS
The great folk-rock scare
Philadelphians Rob Hyman and Eric Bazilian assembled a quintet that specialized in a vile blend of folk-rock and New Wave, in the process proving that the mandolin is more irritating than the synthesizer.
Worst CD Zig Zag (Columbia, 1989)

28 CRASH TEST DUMMIES
They said Brad Roberts�s voice was so deep it could be heard only by whales. Not true, sadly
If you want to be recognized as serious recording artists with a whimsical, folksy bent, it�s probably best not to notch your only hit with a daft novelty song based around the world�s silliest lead vocal and title it �Mmm, Mmm, Mmm, Mmm.� The remainder of God Shuffled His Feet, this Canadian band�s second album, was much worse. They released I Don�t Care That You Don�t Mind in 2001. No one cared.
Appalling fact They�re Canadian.
Worst CD A Worm�s Life (Arista, 1996)

10 AIR SUPPLY
The sound of eunuchs sobbing
Disproving the theory that lightning never strikes twice in the same place, Air Supply contained not one but two mewling, lovesick softies whose name was Russell. In the early �80s, the Australian duo�s gutless ballads � music so remorselessly fey it made Journey sound like Danzig � sent a generation of jilted lovers toppling into depression that was as clinical as the Russells� music. Mercifully, though, by the end of the decade, the pair had cried themselves to sleep.
Appalling fact Determined to ruin the festive season, Air Supply once recorded a Christmas album.
Worst CD The Christmas Album (Arista, 1987)

.. and of course, the king:

4 KENNY G
This guy really blows!
Hated equally by jazz and rock fans, Kenny Gorelick�s limpid instrumentals and obsequious cameos helped turn the soprano sax solo into pop music�s most feared clich�. He started his career with fusion hack Jeff Lorber, and his 1986 album, Duotones, established a steady market for anodyne, minimal background music, an aesthetic that reached its zenith in 1997 when �The G� set a world record by holding a single note for 45 minutes.
Appalling fact He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Washington with a degree in accounting.
Worst CD Classics in the Key of G (Arista, 1999)

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… until the unbearable suffering that is campaigning is in full blast once again.

Can we pay these bozos 66% of their salary because they only work 66% of their time due to the years of campaigning that they all do?

My one political comment for the year:
The world didn’t come to an end two years ago, and it didn’t come to an end last night.

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