Gussying

You may have noticed that I've been gussying the ol' blog up a bit.

I picked the new layout because the skinny text column was driving me CRAZY. I had to resize the pictures down there of Shatner and Mangino over and over. Blogger is terrible enough at pictures without worrying about having room for them. (Because, for reals, Blogger is TERRIBLE with pictures.)

I also added a badge for my Twitter. Twitter is basically a teeny tiny blog (or like a facebook status). You can only post a sentence of two at a time, so it's a nutshell of what's going down at the moment.

I updated my links a little bit to add my sister's Japan blog. She doesn't update much, but it's very interesting when she does.

Finally, since I complain about the weather in Madison so much, I figured I'd just put a little bug over there. Click here to read more . . .

Alberta Clipper

The weather here isn't . . . great this week.

According to the National Weather Service, we're getting the effects of an Alberta Clipper, which is a pretty name for "it's going to be colder and windier than you can shake a stick at." (Side note: one of these days, I want to literally shake a stick at something, just to do it.)

This is just one good reason why Neal and I didn't wait another six months to get married. When people came up here in July, everybody loovvvved Madison. Can you imagine if it were this weekend? (Saturday's high: a balmy 19!)


Compare:

Yesterday, when it was warmer but snowy and cloudy, I took a picture with my phone from about the same spot:

See? Not as good. If you didn't know there was a lake there, you wouldn't be able to tell--and I mean in real life, too. I walked around on the lake when I was over there, and I only had a vague idea of where the shoreline was. Click here to read more . . .

Comics, Except on the "Web"!

I've been gradually accumulating some web comics in my internet reading rotation, so I thought it was high time I shared the good ones with my blog people. (Disclaimer: these all pretty much have strong language and adult themes. To varying degrees--Daisy Owl not very much at all, Diesel Sweeties almost constantly. Any comic I have copied onto this page is fine, anything I link to might have f-bombs or sex jokes.)

xkcd

This is the first one I started reading--I think I found a link from ashpags? Anyway, it's supersuper nerdy, to the point where there are physics and computer jokes that go totally over my head. I think I get this one:

There are more accessible cartoons as well:

(I know I've posted that before, but I don't care.)

Just this week, he put up a chart of relatable references for the metric system (such as 10 Celsius=jacket weather, 80 cm=width of a door frame), which isn't so much funny as it is just really useful and pretty genius (although it's funny too).

Questionable Content

This is probably my favorite web comic. It's a character-based continuous story, so it's a little hard to get into unless you start at the beginning. Also, I had a hard time finding a stand-alone strip without casual swearing, but this one is ok:


The blonde on the left is Hanners, who is adorable and obsessive-compulsive. (She's the best one.) This one is moderately nerdy as well. The only downside is that much of it is music nerdery, which I don't get any of. But like I said, it's mostly character-based anyway. The QC world is one almost identical to our own, except there are robots. And Hanners grew up on a space station. And there's a superhero who delivers pizza.

One interesting aspect of it is that the cartoonist (his name is Jeph) gets better at drawing as he goes along--if you click that link to the first strip, it looks like a completely different cartoon. For whatever reason, I think watching the evolution of his artwork is pretty cool.

Anyway, one reason I'm doing this entire post is because I wish I knew other people who read this, just so I could talk about it with them. ("What do you think of Dora's new hair? I think it's rad! And what is the deal with Faye and Sven?")

This one never fails to crack me up. Especially the rap.

Diesel Sweeties

This one's weird. I'm not going to give you words about it, I'm just going to put some up.
(Oh man. I don't know why I think that last one is so funny, but I do.)

Daisy Owl

This is my most recent discovery. It's cute and offbeat. Daisy and her little brother Cooper are human kids being raised by an owl.

Mr. Owl's best friend is a bear named Steve.

And I've already told you about Garfield Minus Garfield, but here's a recent one:

Click here to read more . . .

I Think Too Hard about Commercials

Usually, all commercials in a series are roughly of the same quality. For instance, all those UPS whiteboard ads inspire the same feeling in me--that feeling of "Cut your hair! Cut your stupid hair!"That's why I'm struck by the unevenness of those AT&T "alter ego" commercials. That one with the T-rex coming to the party instead of the friendly dinosaur? Possibly the funniest commercial in heavy rotation. (Up-and-coming challenger: "I'm sorry Dick Butkus.")



I also mildly enjoy the one where the guy blew up a turkey. On the other hand, there's the one where the news guy, his producer, and his cameraman presumably die gruesome, preventable deaths. That . . . that is a compelling reason to get reliable coverage, I guess. Also in the "not so much" category is the snowman one:



Riddle me this, snowman: say you had received the call. What then? You would have melted anyway, you are a snowman and that is your fate.

Yeah, I know . . . he's a snowman anyway and can't talk on the phone, so why does it matter? Well, it bothers me. Like I said in the title of the post . . . . Click here to read more . . .

Look, It's a Blog Entry!

HELLO AMERICANS!*

So, it's 2009 now, and let's face it--2008 was not a good blog year here at Wisconsin Adventures. It wasn't that I didn't have adventures in 2008. I totally did. But 2008 was a pretty stressful year (really good, but also stressful), so I just never got around to documenting most of them here.

That just means that 2009 will be better! Also, ever since MacKenzie gave me an award/a gentle chiding, I've known that I've got to turn this thing around! So I'm going to see how many days in a row, today included, I can put up a new entry.

I'm also going to try to return to a previous blog goal of including at least one picture in ever entry. I didn't have anything specific in mind for this one, so I googled "awesome." I didn't want to use the first image it gave me, because of course it's something I've already posted. So here's a runner-up:


*This is a reference to a Go Fug Yourself entry that cracks me up whenever I think about it. Click here to read more . . .

College Football Hiring Is Unfair

If you follow college football much, you've probably observed hand-wringing about the number of black coaches. And this is fair. There are only (with the hiring of New Mexico's new coach) four out of 118 head coaches who are black in a sport where about half the players are black. (What I wonder is: where does the disparity start? How many black assistant coaches are there? If there aren't enough black coaches on that level, then there's where any changes would need to start, because it's no use trying to increase the number of head coaches if there just aren't qualified guys.)

Plus, if you look at the case of Auburn, there's clearly a problem. On the one hand, they could have hired Turner Gill, who took the historically terrible Buffalo program to a conference championship (by soundly beating the formerly unbeaten Ball State) and their FIRST EVER bowl game. On the other hand, they had Gene Chizik, who took the historically terrible Iowa State program, which had comparatively flourished under its previous coach, back to its regularly-scheduled terribleness, winning 5 games in two years, including ending this season on a 10-game losing streak. Aaaaaand they picked Chizik. (Hint: this was a stupid hire no matter who else was in the running. Of course, you'd expect a stupid hire from the athletic department who forced out Tommy Tuberville for having one mediocre season. Idiots.)

Just because Charles Barkley agrees with me doesn't mean I'm wrong.

However!

This is not the only way in which college football hiring is, as indicated, unfair.

Mike Leach is still the coach at Texas Tech, despite having a really great season and putting himself out there for a whole bunch of jobs. It really seems like he wanted to leave, so why didn't anybody take him?

The answer: he's weird. (Google search "Mike Leach weird." You will come up with many relevant pages.)

Clearly, atheletic diretors look at his record, look at what he's done with a school with a lot of disadvantages (facilities, location, history, neighboring powerhouses), and despite all the good that says about him, once they interview him or get him on the phone, they're like " . . . Nah."

Example the second!

What kind of coach gets mentioned for vacancies? Picture this guy: he coaches under Jim Tressel, Bill Snyder during the good years at K-State, then becomes offensive coordinator for a team that wins the national championship. He then becomes the head coach at a major conference school, though one that has traditionally languished in mediocrity, but after a few years, takes it to a BCS bowl. Wouldn't the guy you pictured come up in every Coaching Carousel discussion?

What if you pictured him like this:
Seriously--nobody talks about Mark Mangino as highly sought-after. And when you think about it, why not? I contend that it's because, you know, He Big. Click here to read more . . .

How Many 5 Year Olds Could You Take in a Fight?

I saw a link on TexAgs to www.howmanyfiveyearoldscouldyoutakeinafight.com, and between when I clicked it and when it loaded I was thinking "Please be real! Please be real!"

And it was. And was hilarious.

12

Created by OnePlusYou - Free Online Dating

Click here to read more . . .