You heard it here first

John Edwards has admitted to the affair, but says "the kid is not my son, oh no no, hoooo!!!" Any bets on how long it will be before a Billie Jean parody appears?

Efficiencity UK

This is pretty cool if only for the animation. Check it out here!

So now I'm a liberal?

I've said it before and I'll say it a thousand times more. Digging things out of the ground and setting them on fire is not a responsible way to generate energy. Think about it. The majority of our energy comes from burning things. Coal, natural gas, oil... In the 21st Century doesn't it seem odd that we're doing something so completely primitive? It seems ironic to me that as I sit here typing on this high tech computer that somewhere there's a great big mound of burning coal making this possible. This morning I read a heated letter to the editor supporting offshore drilling and how liberals describe oil usage as an addiction. The writer uses the term "liberal no-drill crowd." I know I'm very liberal when it comes to social issues, but fiscally, and I am a Finance wonk, I've always been quite conservative. Do I think it's a good idea to drill holes in the ocean floor and pull out what can only be described as a toxin? Do I want a repeat of the 1969 oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara? No I don't. So does that make me a "no-drill liberal?" I guess it does. Do I at least get a t-shirt with that?

BarackObama(.com) is taking too long to respond

Everybody has their hot button issue for a presidential race. Mine is, and has been since 2000, renewable energy. In '00 Al Gore hadn't really discovered global warming yet. Apparently he was still basking in the glory of inventing the internet. In '04 I'm not really sure what John Kerry was up to. I'm not sure anybody did. Republican candidates seem enamored with oil, and Libertarian candidates love ethanol. And Green Party candidates? Well that's always Ralph Nader. I'm not concerned that we need to be saved from the Corvair again. As a matter of fact, I still see quite a few of them on the road and the drivers seem healthy and happy. This time around John McCain told us here in Kansas City that he wants to build 45 nuclear power plants and start drilling like hell off our coasts. Once again an old white guy trying to make decisions the consequences of which he won't be around to see. So this morning I thought I'd look at Barack Obama's website and actually read his energy policy. He's making me nervous right now because he seems to be backsliding on offshore drilling, dipping into the strategic oil reserve and the biggest misnomer of all "clean" coal. So I did a quick search on "barack obama's energy policy" and found the link to his site. When I loaded it up I got the following: The server at www.barackobama.com is taking too long to respond. Wow! That's either very good news for the Obama campaign in that so many people are attempting to hit his site that the server is overloaded, or someone is trying a denial of service attack (I doubt it). As I write this I finally got the page to load. Al Gore has the right idea. T. Boone Pickens has the right idea. Hopefully Barack Obama will have the right idea. I have some reading to do.

My midtown adventures: Part II

So I have to fill another prescription for poor Nicole who is still suffering from her tonsillectomy. Off to the 39th Street Walgreens I go. This time, I used the drive through. Very handy. Unless of course, they haven't taken the call from your doctor for the meds. It was about 2:30PM so the parking lot was fairly empty. Especially the north side lot facing Big Dude's. It was completely empty so I drove up and pulled into one of the spots where I could call the doctor's office and find out what was up with the prescription. I begin working my way through receptionists, phone nurse's voice mail, receptionist, another receptionist and finally the nurse. She explained to me that she had finally gotten through the busy signal at Walgreens and the script should be ready. About the time I'm finishing my phone call, the thundering bass alerted me to a car pulling in to the spot right next to me. "Be cool" I thought. I'm just a middle-aged white guy in a German sports sedan parked mid-day in the Walgreens parking lot. Nothing out of place. Just blending in. I'm sure there's no reason out of the dozens of empty parking spaces in every direction this person chose to park next to me. As I was completing my phone call I casually glanced over at my new neighbor. She was gathering her things and was preparing to exit the vehicle. Her "things" were a blinged out cellphone and a brown paper bag with a 40 oz sticking out of the top. She staggered around behind our cars and began yelling. "Oh crap" I thought. Fortunately I quickly realized she wasn't yelling at me, but at someone on one of the apartment porches along Central. Something about "Girrrllll I didn't know where to park!" and "You know how we do!" She staggered and weaved her way across the parking lot and disappeared through one of the many bent openings in the metal fence that surrounds Walgreens. Mid-afternoon on a Tuesday and the party in midtown was under way.

My midtown adventures: Part I

The wife had a tonsillectomy last Thursday. As anyone will tell you, this is not an operation you want to have when you're an adult. I brought her home from the surgery center about 3PM, made sure she was comfy and promptly headed out to the Walgreens at 39th & Broadway to get her pain meds prescription filled. When I dropped off the prescriptions they told me it would be at least 30 minutes. Just enough time for me to head next door to McDonald's for a quick lunch. It's funny to sit inside that McDonald's with all the normal looking people when you know there's complete craziness going on outside. You would think the place would be filled with crazoids but their clientele appeared to be businesspeople grabbing a quiet, late lunch. I finished my lunch and walked out to my car. I had parked just opposite the speaker box for the drive through. I started to back out, but a weird sound caught my attention. I know now it was the warble of a police siren being pulsed for a couple of seconds. I rechecked behind me and there were now multiple unmarked police cars surrounding an SUV. The cops had come from all directions in literally just a few seconds. In just a few more seconds there were serious looking plainclothes cops aiming serious looking assault rifles and screaming at the occupants of the SUV. The most interesting part of this was the reaction of the occupants in the SUV. Woman passenger, seemingly not surprised that she was being ordered out of the vehicle at gunpoint. Male driver, disgusted, but also obviously not surprised he was being ordered out of the vehicle at gunpoint. I can't even imagine how I would react to a bunch of serious-looking dudes aiming assault rifles at me. As the police put them both in ziptie handcuffs and moved them out of the way, all the police vehicles vanished as quickly as they had arrived. The whole thing went down in less than 30 seconds. I backed out and got the hell out of there. Will I ever go back to that McDonald's? Sure! Just another day in midtown. That's just how I roll...

My Town, My Eyes

So I've been waiting to blog about my lasik experience until I could look back objectively. I think I'm far enough removed now to describe my experience without using too many profanities. For the faint of heart, I suggest you stop reading. This post is pretty graphic. First, the surgery went fine and I would do it again in a heartbeat. Being able to live without contacts or glasses is wonderful. My eyesight gets a little wacky every once in a while and my eyes tend to get tired in the evening but I'm told that's normal for the first few weeks. The day of the surgery I was nervous. They run a bunch of you through one after the other so you're sitting in a waiting room with people who are in the same boat as you. In my case I was sitting across from a prominent TV news personality who was just in front of me on the schedule. They call you back in 20 minute intervals to a prep area where you are fitted with a surgical gown, cap and booties. They give you a half milligram of Valium and some ibuprofen to take the edge off and put you in a recliner to hang out until the drugs take effect. TV news guy gave me a nod and a "hello" in a manner that told me he was feeling pretty good. Unfortunately for me I have a very high tolerance to most sedative-type drugs so giving me a Valium did about as much good as a sugar pill. In fact, by the time the nurse came to get me I was jiggling my legs like a preschooler who just finished off a box of Cocoa Puffs. So TV news guy gets taken back to surgery and was back very quickly. He seemed none the worse for wear and gave me a sort of "it's not so bad" look as they ushered him back to his recliner. So they take me back to the operating room where they ask you to state your name and which eye(s) is being operated on. After that there's no messing around. You're on your back on the table and they're taping your eye wide open with four strips of medical tape and putting anesthetic drops in. Then comes the CLAMP. First some explanation. Your eye has to remain absolutely motionless during the laser procedure. Since a normal person is not able to keep their eye still while someone smokes it with a laser, they place a jig that literally clamps on to your eyeball. Only one problem. To your average person who is whacked out on Valium this amounts to about as much discomfort as a tap on the shoulder. To someone like me with full awareness of what was going on it felt like... Well, it felt like someone was putting a clamp on my eyeball! As I attempted to rip the cover off the operating table and refrain from using the kind of language reserved for hitting your thumb with a hammer, I felt several pairs of hands holding me still. I'm pretty sure at that point they all realized I wasn't a drugged-out Valium-type guy. After the shock of the clamp, everything else was a breeze. First Doctor Silverstein explained that I would briefly lose my vision. He didn't explain "why" but I knew from research that they were making the incision for "the flap." That only took a few seconds. Then the laser began. It was nothing more than a seeing a bunch of tiny red dots dancing around in your vision. It was almost soothing compared to the medieval torture device clamped to my eye. Of course something else they don't prepare you for is the smell. Ever get a whiff of burning eyeball? Each eye took four minutes total from clamp on to clamp off. I was much more prepared for the second eye since I knew what was coming. Tape, drops, clamp, internal swearing, temporary blindness, light show, "what's that smell?" and then done. So it's been three weeks and my eyes are doing great. I see perfectly and even my closeup vision has improved to the point where I don't have to ask Nicole to read fine print for me. I know reading glasses are still in my future but it seems I have delayed the inevitable for now. The people at Silverstein Eye Center were fantastic. Aside from the whole "not telling me about the clamp" thing which really wasn't their fault. How were they to know I need a horse tranquilizer to get me in the mood for eyeball clamps? If you want to ditch your glasses and contacts it's definitely the way to go.