jordanhollinger (a web log) Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. - Charles Darwin

Visiting home for Thanksgiving and putting up the family tree. My mother has been complaining that our tree (plastics make it possible) is too large for our living room. She didn’t appreciate an attempt at compromise.

I saw Abraham Lincoln recently. Not in a cloud or a potato chip. In person. He showed up for the 150th anniversary of the Murfreesboro courthouse in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Looking good considering that whole John Wilkes Booth thing. Then he let us do some handstands.

I love Ubuntu as much as the next guy (assuming he loves Ubuntu), but this is just horrible, really, really bad UI design.

Firstly, why can’t you just run it on your own, Update Manager? And secondly, run what action now? Every flipping button in the UI could be called that. How can you be so obtuse?

Would you rather find a bone in your chicken sandwich, a rock in your salad, or packing foam in a bag of M&M’s? Think carefully; it could happen.

It isn’t every day a town has a Wiffle ball tournament. Nor would I wish it so. This past weekend a friend and I drove to northern Ohio to visit some other friends and play in their church’s annual Wiffle ball tournament. Last year I slipped and fell flat on my face at first base. I’ve been looking forward to redeeming myself.

The tournament was organized into three fields, with six teams playing at once, progressing in some kind of double-elimination system. My ignorance of sports precluded any understanding any of it. I just swung and ran when they told me. My team, the Evil Good-doers, decided we needed walk out music. In a moment of inanity I chose Phantom of the Opera. (I know that’s ridiculous, but another guy had Kiss the Girl from Little Mermaid.) Somehow we made it through two games. I helped win the first with a home run and helped lose the second by getting tagged at first. I was pretty happy with that.

Afterwards we got ice cream from a local hole-in-the-wall grease spot. I celebrated/consoled myself with a 32 oz cookies and cream shake. Yes, it was ridiculously large. And good. If it wasn’t five hours away I would be dead of them by now.

I’ve having the worst dinner ever right now. This is the first time I’ve tried cooking in my new apartment. Penne pasta with chicken and sugar snap peas. No, the food’s fine.

I’m not sure where the smoke came from, because I never saw any. The smoke detector and I have definite opposing opinions on that. It was probably the pasta boiling over or the ashes in the microwave that used to be frozen peas. Turns out you’re not supposed to remove those Steamables from the bag.

While figuring out the locks on my windows, both to let out smoke and so that my alarm could warn the neighborhood about the newbie, I realized the smoke might be coming from my chicken in the oven. I don’t remember where I got my oven mitts, but if I did I’d never go back. They’re about as insulating as copper underwear in a thunderstorm.

I still don’t know what burned, because it wasn’t the chicken either. Now that I’ve made more peas I’m enjoying the meal standing at my counter, since it’s not yet furnished with a table or chairs. Oh, I just got sauce on my shirt.

I received my new, unlocked cell phone today. Naturally, the keypad is Cyrillic. I can’t begin to imagine how useful this will be in central Kentucky.

There’s something about listening to an album when each song you hear is better than all the rest. They aren’t all the same. They aren’t even all similar. They’re just beautiful, and you wish each song would go on forever. But they don’t, and eventually there are no more songs left. You realize that will happen as soon as you begin listening, but you can’t let yourself think too much about that. You wouldn’t fully appreciate the songs, because your focus would be on some event in the unknown future. Yes, the album will end eventually, but not while the music is still playing. You can hope there will be another song, but don’t let that pull you away from the one playing now.

This is the month of March. To many people, that brings one thing to mind: March Madness. It does not bring that to my mind. Hearing my friends talk excitedly about it, I imagined it to be a baseball tournament. Turns out it’s not. It’s basketball.

Now that you understand my level of interest in sports, you’ll see how uncharacteristic it was of me to fill out something called a “bracket.” Filling it out posed a problem, as I know nothing of college basketball or team rankings. My initial thought was to fill it out at random. But that’s just crazy. You have to put thought into it. Have to have a method. So I chose the teams with the longest names.

Until last night I was ahead of a friend who spends what I deem an inordinate amount of time keeping up with sports. We’re now neck and neck. So in the words of Brian Regan, “Go my favorite sports team! Score a goal-basket-unit!”