Beard Cap

Ha ha!

I was going to buy this for Davin, but then I found out they're $135...

Too bad Davin.

Happy Thanksgorging.

Yeah, but can he do Elliot's Exploding-Wine-Glass-Trick?

I busted out the Gyro Ring (aka Jitter Ring, Chatter Ring) at a party last night in an attempt to steal some of the fire out from under the Wii: that I knew would be otherwise dominating the nerdiest of party goers' attentions. I'm happy to say that my friends are at least as 'cool' as they used to be (I definitely am), and many of them really had fun with the toy - and Elliot even invented a new trick... (I wish we had a video of that... Sorry Baker and Marie!) :)

I got one of these at a toy store back in high school, right after the Yo-Yo craze, and recently decided to try to get my hands on one again. Not knowing what the thing was called, it took some creative Google searching to come up with the right item, but I eventually found them for sale (on Ebay) . I'm already as good as I once was, but that's not saying much. I expect that I'll play with it a couple more times in the next month or two, maybe learn a new trick, and then back to the closet it'll go.

But it'll be fun while it lasts.

SGIA '07 - Orlando

Me, working the booth in Orlando.

At the end of last month I got to go to Orlando with 'the guys' here at Northwest Graphic Supply and help out at our Screen Systems booth. Mostly, I acted as a general technician and TJET operator, but I got to try out my share of sales pitches on the passing crowds as well. (Usually my customer interactions went something like, "Oh yeah, that's a great product. What's in it?/What's it used for?/What's the distributor discount? etc... Oh, I don't know, I'm just the booth lackey, but I can have you talk to one of our sales people as soon as one's free... How 'bout this weather?") But by the end of the show I actually felt like I had helped out quite a bit.

These pictures are from inside the Convention Center. Uncrating (above), working the booth (left, below right). Bob, Dave and Ben (and me, in the right corner) are in the picture here to the right. Alan (my boss, the company owner) and John were also at the show, but we took turns manning the booth so everyone had time to wander the floor. You can see Canon has a booth a couple rows behind us, Anatol (a big screen printing press maker) is right next to us, 3M was off to the left a couple rows. Also at the show were Epson, Brother, HP, Graphtec... basically all of the big names in printers/printing, as well as thousands of smaller outfits you've never heard of.


It was pretty cool after all was said and done. And definitely a nice break from the day-to-day type of work I do at the shop. (And we actually got to go to some pretty incredible restaurants for dinner each night too!) I hope that they decide to take me again next time... or maybe I'll have to go as a representative of NWG to one of the international shows I hear my boss talking about.

Paris anyone? :)

Grounds for Impeachment

I started reading this article, Joseph A. Palermo: The Starr Report: How to Impeach a President, not knowing exactly what it was all about, but I quickly guessed where it was going... Still though, I thought the article well written and thought provoking -- enough so that I could realistically consider the points that it raises for the impeachment of our current president.

For the most part, the arguments I've heard for Bush's impeachment have come across as bitterly idealistic and as unhelpfully accusatory as the allegations against Clinton that are noted in the above article. (The Palermo article is mostly about Clinton/Starr, and builds a case against Bush by weakening Starr's and the public's attack of Clinton.) But this article seems sincere, and sincerely worried about the state of our country and it's unfortunate leadership.

And where I'll certainly agree (with my terribly limited knowledge of US and Presidential history) that Bush is the worst President of all time, I can't see him doing anything as horrible as people like Palermo are forecasting... Again, that kind of thinking sounds like 'bitter-liberal' to me... But after reading this article I have to agree, if Clinton deserved impeachment, so does Bush. Not that necssarily I think we should go there.

See, as partisan as this country is, I wouldn't want impeachment to become a trend for every President down the line... Then I suppose it just goes downhill until we have another civil war.

Sorry. Not funny. Thoughts?