Keep Austin Weird bumper stickers are all the rage these days, but this morning this bumper sticker made me smile:

(Round Rock is a suburb of Austin)

I really have no idea how many people read my blog. If you do, I’d like to hear from you. Either add a comment to this post or drop me an email. I’d like to know:

• How long you’ve been reading my blog
• What you like and dislike about it
• How you found my blog, if you remember
• What you’d like to see more of

Thanks, Stan

I find Signs of Life oddly fascinating

From the news wires:

Pack of angry Chihuahuas attack officer in Fremont
A pack of angry Chihuahuas attacked a police officer who was escorting a teenager home following a traffic stop, authorities said.
The officer suffered minor injuries including bites to his ankle on Thursday when the five Chihuahuas escaped the 17-year-old boy’s home and rushed the officer in the doorway, said Fremont detective Bill Veteran.
The teenager had been detained after the traffic incident, Veteran said.
The officer was treated at a local hospital and returned to work less than two hours later, Veteran said.

Well, MetaFilter has had its seemingly annual discussion of the value of perpetuating the idea of Santa Claus to children. One thing that strikes me about the discussion is that very few people have recounted what they have done or are doing with their own kids. I think that many MetaFilter members are young and childless (especially the ones posting on Christmas day perhaps).
I remember back before we had kids, I would make statements about what I never/always would do with my future children. My father-in-law would just gently shake his head and snicker. Now that I have kids, I understand my father-in-law’s response. Raising children challenges every preconceived notion you have and destroys many of them. You really can’t imagine what it’ll be like until you are a parent yourself. Things that you thought would be important turn out to be inconsequential and you devote large amounts of emotional energy to issues you never even thought of before.

This is awesome (if a little vulgar for my tastes). An excerpt:

Can we back up just a couple steps here? At what point did a basic understanding of the separation of church and state become a f*cking war on religion? And how did we get to the point where you can call an organization set up to defend our civil liberties “Terrorists” on national television and no one fires your *ss? Enough. F*ck all of you lying little sh*theads who wish the world was out to get you so you could play the poor oppressed victims. Wake up *ssholes — you’re the cowboys, not the f*cking Indians.

(Sorry about the censorship; I don’t really want my blog to get blacklisted by nanny programs)

An AP Story, via USA Today:

Sparrow knocks over 23,000 dominoes before being shot
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — A sparrow knocked over 23,000 dominoes in the Netherlands, nearly ruining a world record attempt before it was shot to death Monday, the state news agency reported.
The unfortunate bird flew through an open window at an exposition center in the northern city of Leeuwarden where employees of television company Endemol NV have worked for weeks setting up more than 4 million dominoes in an attempt to break the official Guinness World Record for falling dominoes on Friday night.
Only a system of 750 built-in gaps in the chain prevented the bird from knocking most or all of the dominoes over ahead of schedule, “Domino Day” organizers were quoted as saying by the NOS news agency.
The bird was shot by an exterminator with an air rifle while cowering in a corner.
The organizers are out to break their own record of 3,992,397 dominoes set last year with a record of 4,321,000.

The screenshot below (click on the image for a larger version) is from a Microsoft Small Business article titled 8 e-mail mistakes that make you look bad. I think they should add mistake #9: Failing to proofread.

We decided to pop some popcorn for Halloween, so I broke out our harvest gold hot air popcorn popper from the 1980s. The kids had never seen such a device and were fascinated by the popcorn popping and coming out the shoot. Next time they complain about being bored, I’m breaking out the Popcorn Pumper again.

A little juvenile humor for the middle of the week (click on image for larger version):