A day of celebration obviously. Actually mine includes “days” of celebration spanning two weekends. To initiate the festivities we gathered at Moe’s Cantina in Wrigleyville. Yes, that is correct, we visited a Mexican bar for an Irish holiday. All the Irish pubs, authentic or not, were slammed packed; many with lines an hour long to enter. The second bash was a day time event at Mr. Weist’s. The affair started quite early and for myself and some others ended rather early as well. I will leave the details out for I scarcely recollect any happenings.

The bar pictures are taken by my hand while the far superior daytime pictures are the result of Kelly B’s fantastic eye.

Few people actually read the fine print disclosures they receive; nothing new. Maybe this careless behavior is the by product of fine print being too fine. I rummaged through the fine print after receiving my HIPPA Notice of Privacy Practices from my current health care insurance provider by way of snail mail. After reading the small pamphlet a wave of anxiety washed over me realizing a fact I had known all along. ALL of your private life is readily available to “commercial partners” for use in anyway they see fit and there is really nothing you can do about it. This is important information; I do not want my medical history floating around to companies so that they can try to sell me something to which I have no interest. Here are some of the more humorous excerpts from the doc:

Health Related Services: We may use your Personal Health Information (PHI) to contact you with information about health-related benefits and services or about treatment alternatives that may be of interest to you. We may disclose your PHI to a business associate to assist in these activities.

Wait it gets better…

We may use or disclose your PHI to encourage you to purchase or use a product or service by face-to-face communication of to provide you with promotional gifts.

No thank you – just pay what you are contracted to pay on my behalf. I really do not want shit from your loosely affiliated businesses.

(more…)

Finger Breakdancing – this took some practice…

IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad, ranked 4th richest man in the world, drives a 15-year-old car and always flies economy class…

A study on the accuracy of the free online resource Wikipedia by the prestigious journal Nature has been described as “fatally flawed”…

The opening episode of the 10^th South Park season arrived with a gut punch. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators, brought back Chef, the character that Scientologist Isaac Hayes will no longer be voicing due to an episode mocking his religion. The creators brought him back to set him of fire, impale him, shoot him, and attack him by way of mountain lion and grizzly bear to joint the lovable cook. Stone said:

In ten years and over 150 episodes of South Park, Isaac never had a problem with the show making fun of Christians, Muslims, Mormons or Jews. He got a sudden case of religious sensitivity when it was his religion featured on the show.

(more…)

The cyclicality of the Formula 1 auto sport is amazing. With the committed technological resources and the huge amount of dollars spent in research and development one would think that reliability would be of utmost importance. But with the results of the Malaysian Grand Prix behind us the new V8s for the 2006 season appear to be as unreliable as ever. Don’t get me wrong, I think that Giancarlo Fisichella and teammate Fernando Alonso drove an impeccable race to place team Renault 1 – 2 on the podium. But Renault is a French team and the French could not make a car if their lives depended on it.

I am sure I will take some heat for this as it is easy to jump on a bandwagon and cheer on the best in a sport, but it pains me to see Michael Schumacher struggle with such an over funded Ferrari team that just a couple of years ago was so dominate. Instead of receiving formal protests from eight other teams about the “flexi-wing” interpretation of ridged fixed-body aerodynamics, how about Ferrari making an engine that does not required substitution three times before the actual race.

I look forward to Schumacher and Ferrari getting their act together as well as a little luck going the way of Kimi Raikkonen to actually finish a race and make the 2006 season a competitive one.

Malaysian Grand Prix 2006 - Results

‘Tis the season for traveling. Wait… back up- ‘tis the season for weddings that require me to travel. Oh the fun of flying with your appropriately pressed suit in a case or if you are adventures in a garment bag to be thrown in a jetliner over head only to emerging a wrinkled ball of clothe. Enough with the pleasantries of traveling, I have a question that needs an answer. I engage in a strategy that has back fired on me more than once but not enough to deter further gambling. I tend to wait for airfares to recede in price before making the final purchase hoping that as the flight deadline approaches the airline will be forced to reduce fares to reach seating capacity and hence turn a per flight profit. Obviously I do not wait for this to happen on Spring break type of weekends or highly desirable destinations, say Hawaii, for that is sheer stupidity.

So I ask my readers, all ten of you, which is a better alternative. To wait it out and hopefully snatch that last minute “best” fare or take it on the chip and pony up early to secure your seat?

Saturday night the wife and I had plans to attend an all-you-can-drink “benefit” for cancer research. I am a huge supporter of such activites (supported of cancer research the is) but thought that drinking my face off and cancer research might not be the best of combinations. In light of my fading enthusiasm for our plans a recent transplant to the fine city of Chicago invited us to catch up over cocktails. This invitation was a good alternative and was accepted. They suggested meeting at the Signature Room on the 96 floor of the John Hancock Center. After learning of the intended destination I became uneasy knowing that any place on Michigan Avenue is a giant tourist snare; especially on a weekend night. I sucked it up, adorned my sports coat and hit the door. To my surprise the lounge was not overly crowded, the drinks were reasonably priced and the view spectacular. After a few cold Ketels we moved over to the floor-to-ceiling windows and gazed at the orange glow of the city from 1000 feet. The night proved my preconceived opinion that tourist activities were to be avoided like the plague as an incorrect prejudice. If you happen to live in the city or are visiting I suggest a dinner at the Hancock Center in the Signature Room or cocktails in the attached lounge. Just make sure that you request window seating – you will not be disappointed.

Sorry, I did not have my camera with me nor a tripod that would be necessary to take night stills. Sfmoe captured a pretty good pic from the south side of the restaurant.

Click on the link to download a package of pictures.

Update: made select photos public on flickr.

Enough with the procrastination; I am reintroducing stickrod.com to the triple dub world / blog-o-shere in 2006. The last year, two thousand and five, has been a year of change not only for this website but for the Stickrod life as well. Let me briefly chronicle the events. The headline affair was joining Catherine in holy matrimony on February 5th; quite a grandiose event. This followed closely by a step up the corporate ladder with a new company and a residence reposition to the windy city of Chicago.

Now for the more technical changes as if marriage, job and a new city were not enough. This site has relocated as well moving from my basement to a professionally hosted environment at Dreamhost. No longer do I fret about power outages or IP address changes in the middle of the night. CMS is now run through WordPress (no longer Movable Type) which is taking me longer to learn than first thought. The current design is no where near my vision for the site so changes will be frequent and drastic as will be witnesses by repeat visits. The core theme is currently and for the foreseeable future K2 by Michael and Chris with some lame attempts on my part to alter the CSS to my liking. As I was reading thought some of my old posts from the previous life I had a moment of clarity and realized that I generally disliked what I had written and decided not to upload the posts to this new site. Wiping the slate clean and starting anew is invigorating; breathing life (hopefully) into this once dull blog.

I hope that you enjoy the content that I throw to the world in IO form.