Well, we've been talking about this for the past few months and playing around with the idea, but the situation is at a point where we may actually look for and find a second pug.  We were thinking about getting a black one and naming him Nori.

I'm sure that you have fond memories of when one or another parent takes a trip and comes back with gifts.  Well Pastor Steve and family came back from Korea this week after three weeks filled with church seminars (for the first week for Pastor Steve) and tourism for the whole family.  PAstor Steve makes it a point to come back with gifts.  Suprisingly, he brought us not only the chopsticks that Rea coveted, but a superman costume for Mochi (I'll show the photo below.)  The suprising this is that he would never ever think of getting a costume for his dog.  He did this because he knows that we are freaks for Mochi.

For the most part, Mochi liked the costume, though like any piece of clothing he wears, it tends to make him hot and uncomfortable.  It does look cool, like he's really superdog.

I just saw this commercial (with Tivo I haven't been able to catch many commercials) with an aging Richard Dean Anderson reprising his role as Angus Macgyver.  While I appreciate this foray into my childhood memories watching this show on Sundays and Saturdays, I am somewhat chagrined that this walk down memory lane came courtesy of Mastercard.  This is nothing new, but I protest the exploitation of nostalgia to make us feel good toward a product.

Today I got a haircut at this new place near my home.  The Belmont Barbershop is run by these two guys (one of whom I judge to be a true geek) who made it up like a real guy's place.  It's spacious and airy with just right touch of manliness.  I sat down on the couch and was pleasantly suprised to be able to take a comic book from the reading shelf!  And not some DC/Marvel (not that there's anything wrong with those,) but a Vertigo title, called "The Invisibles".  Cool.  I geeked out for a bit while waiting for my haircut, I also noticed a pool table as I walked toward the seat, which pretty much sealed the deal as this being the place where I'll get my hair cut from now on.  Sal's where I used to go, gave out free beer on Fridays (and some Saturdays) but I can get the same feel from these guys.  I looked around and saw a lot of really subtle touches, e.g. the stations for each barber is actually a rolling toolbox.  The guys cutting my hair was wearing a Micronauts shirt, which is why I judged him to be a true geek -- if you don't know don't worry, you will not benefit from any kind of explanation, if you know what I am talking about, where can I get one of those right?!  Oh yeah the haircut is pretty nice too, I was quite satisfied with it.

By more popular demand, I have been forced to post more pictures of Mochi. Unless I do this, I will suck in the eyes of certain people. So I take some time out of my busy schedule to please. The following were taken at the antique show a couple weeks ago. Bobby graciouly took these while we were sitting in the shade. Mochi was very hot but also very curious about the camera.

Today a kid asked me if I knew the significance of the day(he didn't use the word significance)  he then told me that it was the devil's day.  Hmmm... you'd think that people would remember that it's the 62nd anniversary of D-day, I like lluang's entry regarding this quite a lot.

But thinking about days to celebrate, how about this month being national Accordion appreciation month.  Or this week being Cease fire week in Chicago, or any number of other things that are going on right now.

Will this mean that we will all bein an uproar about July 7th of next year?

This post was inspired by degeneral's comment to my first chess problem.  This is from a column that Bruce Pandolfini wrote for the website chesscafe.com.  Having come across it just now, I can't resist posting it.

Question
In the film Searching for Bobby Fischer, there is a scene in which
you (portrayed by Ben Kingsley) sweep the pieces off the board in order to
get Josh Waitzkin (Max Pomeranc) to analyze a position in his head. Did
this really happen? Also, did you always place such an emphasis on
analyzing without moving the pieces? Sy Hartman (New York)

Answer
The particular scene you’ve asked about never took place. Over the years,
I’ve performed many antics to get the attention of my students, but before
the film I never scattered all the chess pieces with abandon, nor did I
ever do anything like that with Josh Waitzkin.

This dramatic device was the
invention of gifted screenwriter and director Steve Zaillian. He thought
it up, and I think it works very well in the movie. So well, in fact, that
it inspired me to add this artifice to my arsenal of teaching tricks after
the film’s release –another illustration of real life imitating art. But
it didn’t go anywhere.

With regard to making
students analyze in their heads, I see nothing eccentric about this. It’s
the hallmark of the strong player, so why shouldn’t I require my students
to practice doing this as often as possible? You’ll find that most chess
teachers also encourage their students to analyze without moving the
pieces, if merely to cut down on touch-move blunders. Students naturally
resist analyzing in their heads at first, but regular effort on the
teacher’s part, as well as a steady diet of winning because of it, can
usually lessen the resistance to it over time.

While I have always stressed
analyzing without moving the pieces, there’s a little more to it. When I
first started teaching I found myself getting sick fairly often. I
realized that one of the reasons for this was the mutual touching of chess
pieces between me and the students. These objects, whether Staunton design
or not, can be loaded with germs.

One wintry day, I went to a
student’s house to give a lesson and found him to be terribly sick with a
common cold. I wondered why the parent hadn’t called me to cancel the
lesson, when he explained it all away, saying that the coughing and
sneezing were nothing to worry about and that I shouldn’t be so paranoid.
He even offered some tissues.

That’s when I decided to
introduce a new kind of lesson. Instead of sitting together with my
student at the board, I had him take up residence on the couch, while I
found my niche on a comfortable chair, twenty feet away. For the entire
hour we talked chess without a set but with a twenty-foot buffer zone. It
was a hard lesson, and an expedient one, though by its termination I felt
something had clicked. What’s more, so did the student, who came away with
a true sense of accomplishment. The father got the left over tissues.

Thereafter, I had students
analyze in their heads almost all the time, even when they weren’t sick
and there were no comfortable chairs. Eventually I figured out how to make
much of this head stuff work, and I really think my students were the
primary beneficiaries, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Copyright 1999
Bruce Pandolfini. All Rights Reserved.

Someone demanded that there be longer posts posted by people on his subscription list.  Being a natural pleaser, I am happy to comply, as he also made the stipulation that not all of these posts should deal with chess, i decided I should comply with that as well.

I'm sitting at the McDonalds writing this.  Why am I here?  I met my instructon here to sign some more stuff for school.  Apparently they forgot to include a couple things in my exit package the other day.  We then had a discussion about work and school and me being up for the site support tech job at school.  I think that my instructor will really be pushing for me to get this job.  I decided to meet him here because I can't get decent access at school and because the connection here is only $3 for 2 hours.  That's a bargain for decent connection with a good speed and without any filters as far as I can tell.  I know that Staples and Panera have free wireless on site, but if you're going to charge for internet at your store/restauraunt, this is definitely the way to go.  The price is cheap enough to not make someone think twice about using it for just a few minutes or for the whole two hours.  You can get a subscription if you go to McDonalds a lot and whether you get a subscription or pay by the two-hour block, it's painless.  Starbucks should take some note, maybe I'll dislike them a little less.

Sitting here, in this comfy chair I notice for the first time that the music choice on the speakers here is really good.  A nice mix of classic rock, I'm listening to Pink Floyd's Us and Them end as I type this.

You'd think she'd read the description.
We've been having some good results selling out stuff on Amazon.com.  I'm not sure how much we made, but judging by the number of packages I've had to put together and send out, it should be a lot.  Recently we sold my region 2 version of spirited away (the original japanese dvd).  The purchaser apparently didn't look closely enough as she was expecting a region 1 coded disc.  Not too bright, we've also run into a few incidents where the dvd/cd was "damaged" i.e. they couldn't get it to play on their player.  I guess this is to be expected as these are old disks, and I'm pretty sure that this won't be the last time we hear from people with claims.

Which leads me to something that I've observed from my mother-in-law's flower shop.  Rea was telling me this as well.  The people who seem to frequent the shop seem t o come in two flavors.  Those customers who are pretty cool with things and the picky bas jerks who seem to wish they have their own flowershops.  The former come in, find an arrangement that they like and pay for it.  The latter want something small and insignificant and then proceed to dictate their changes/upgrades in minute detail, then they want to pay you less than what the thing is worth (in materials and labor.)  Rea's mom has taken to asking these types to leave.  What gets me is that they keep declaring that they are good regular customers.  Well I guess once a year is kinda regular...  Next time they say this and I'm dealing with them, I'll just talk about some of our better customers.  There's one guy that left a list of birthdays, and addresses of his two sisters and mother and asked Rea's mom to deliver flowers on every occasion he listed as well as the major ones (mother's day, valentines, etc.)  He left a credit card number and loves everything that my m-i-l sends.  There's a nice customer, what would you do if you were on some kind of service rant at a place like this and the guy confronted you with a comparison between your sorry self and his best customer?  If it were me, I'd walk (but then my momma didn't raise someone who would complain like these people do.)

After coming back home, I decided I needed to get a USB flash drive.  I checked online to see if I can get something cheap somewhere nearby.  I found a 1Gig stick for $30 + tax at Microcenter.  This is not my favorite store and something happened when I was there that made me like it less.  I walked over to the section I was looking for and found the flash drives in a little display.  I confirmed the price with one of the guys and he did something that kinda upset me.  He stuck a little sticker with his name on it.  Now... there's no way that this putz sold me this usb key, all he did was stick his stupid sticker on it.  I was so upset, I went into the printer toner aisle and stuck his sticker on one of the toner boxes.  I hope he gets into trouble.

This is one of the reasons why I kinda dislike this store.  Other than the occasional deal that they have, I try not to step foot in there.

Today I went to school to return my laptop and fill out my exit papers.  I am now "cleared" for graduation.  On the way out, I see a traffic "not"-cop writing me a ticket.  I yell at him that it's like 2 minutes over (really it was) and he just keeps on writing.  I call him a tinpot martinet and continue yelling that of course he's not stopping as he's writing his own mealticket.  He quietly writes the rest of the ticket and checks my plate sticker for good measure.  At least he's a professional, I'm probably not even the worst he'll see today.  What gets me is that he obviously stuck around while the clock ran out to give me this ticket.

On to the dealership to pick up Rea and Mochi.  I end up walking Mochi around in the parking lot of the park next door only to be told that dogs aren't allowed in the park, not even in the parking lot.  Why is it that people in the suburbs are so pet-unfriendly?  I feel like I'm put upon whenever I take Mochi for a walk, that people are watching me suspiciously, I'm responsible, I always have bags for Mochi, and these villages have to get over their spotless self image of themselves.

On the way back home, Mochi lay in his travel bed enjoying the AC.